Brian Lara stole the show
F Waliullah

Once world champion West Indies team, consisting of players from various countries, are going to start their second tour of Bangladesh starting from today 29th November.

In their maiden tour to Bangladesh, Brian Lara - their champion at the time, stole the show. He went near a world record or has made a world record of sort in one of the two One Day International matches against Bangladesh. In that match, before he was out within 20 overs, he scored a smashing hudred. And then Bangladeshi bowlers and fielders had really come back and to be
specific, Habibul Bashar - the part time off spinner, not the specialist batsman, got him out and also probably bowled the spell of his life - 31 runs off his 10 overs.

With his help, the rest of the bowlers also managed to get into the act and restrict the West Indies team to just around 300 runs in 50 overs, when at one stage, while Brian Lara was batting, it looked like that they would beat the world record of Sri Lanka by scoring past 395 runs made against Bangladesh's arch rivals Kenya.

Since then, Bangladesh has been granted test status and has played quite a number of test matches. Habibul Bashar has become the most consistent player among all the Bangladeshi batsman.

Times have also changed for West Indies. Although they had Wavell Hinds back then, who also scored a smashing innings, the inclusion of an in form Chris Gayle and a more talented batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan along with the magistic Steve Waugh-like Marlon Samuels has made the West Indies team even a stronger one than in 1999.

Whether Bangladesh has also changed and improved just as the West Indies team did, that is the question now.

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