Bangladesh is clearly favorites for the Canada game. Having lost to so many teams in such a short time, a victory has become long due, especially since Canada has almost nobody in their line up of International experience.

In case we have all forgotten how many times and how badly we lost to the teams since our last world cup match and getting test status. We lost to the three Asian giants - India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the 2000 Asia cup in Dhaka. Where we did pretty poorly against Pakistana and SriLanka, but our batsman managed to get some pride back in the India match. Then we lost to England in the 2000 ICC Knockout in Kenya. Then we had a horrible tour to South Africa - our batsman were all out for 50 odd runs in 2 one day games. Then we played well in our inaugural test match against India. It made us to believe in ourselves and forced us to be overconfident and in the process, we lost to Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe - completely whitewashed. Yes, we managed to beat our own record of highest total in one day international cricket in the Zimbabwe tour, but when a win was an expectation, these little records does not matter really. Then Zimbabwe came to Bangladesh and we had to taste another whitewash this time on our home soil in the one day series. The only relief was that rain came to rescue us and so we were not whitewashed
in the test series as well. In between we had another bad time in Pakistan and in SriLanka where we played in the Asian Test Championship. The only pride for us in that tour was the world record made by Mohammad Ashraful. But the way things are going now, it seems that we are all wishing that it would have been better if Ashraful had not made that world record.

Then at the end of the year, we lost to New Zealand in the 2 match test series. There our pacers Mashrafee Bin Murtoza and Mohammad Sharif got some real experience of bowling on pacers' favorable conditions. But that too ended in a nightmare since Mashrafee had to pull out off the Pakistan tour because of injury. Then Sharif became injured. And we lost to Pakistan and faced yet another whitewash.

With their injury and also injury to Javed Omar, things made the selectors to blood in a new group of young players into the Bangladesh side. And thus the inclusion of Talha Jubair, Ehsanul Haque and Hannan Sarkar in the next tour of Bangladesh in Sri Lanka. There in the first test, failure of our veteren cricketers - Aminul Islam and Akram Khan had forced the selectors to make some more changes into the Bangladesh side. This way, Tapash Baisya and Alok Kapali came in. And it was an immediate success - first Tapash Baisya and Alok Kapali built a partnership against a second string Sri Lankan test side. Then in another innings, Mohammad Ashraful and again Alok Kapali built another partnership for Bangaldesh.

But all these positive things turned bad after a 76 all out by Bangladeshi batsman against Sri Lanka - a new low for Bangladesh. Then again a month later Bangladeshi batsman again faultered by scoring yet another 77 all out against a lowly rated New Zealand in the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy. Everybody thought that the South Africa tour coming up, Bangladeshis will be clobbered on the hands of Proteas fast bowling. But in the South Africa tour, Bangladeshi batsman, well the lower order and lower middle order batsman in particular, have managed to put Bangladesh on a respectable position in each game.

And then the test series against South Africa went very well for Bangladesh - at least in the batting department. This made everybody to think that the Bangladeshi batsman have now become matured and somewhat experienced. The team spirit went up. It showed in the next series for Bangladesh too. Bangladesh played really well against the West Indies.

But the real thing is that this West Indies team did not have Brian Lara, Carl Hooper, Marvin Dillon in their side. So Bangladesh played well against an inexperienced West Indian attack - batting or bowling wise. Also the way that Sarwan and Powell could smash the South African bowlers all over the place, this is now clear that Bangladesh did not do that well against South Africa. But we all started to really think so after watching Sri Lanka and then Pakistan losing to the same South African team almost the same way.

But then again, how many times did we manage to get a win against an opponent in an away series? I remember about one time - we went to Canada and USA before the ICC tournament in 1997 and we were humiliated by the host teams. Only one thing that was bad for us that I think was a caution of not to be over-confident and that was the loss to Namibia in the second one day game in Namibia series. Since Canada team were able to beat almost the same Namibian team at their home in the ICC 6 Nation's Challenge trophy, so I think that anything is possible.

And we certainly are the favorites in the match against Canada since we played so many test matches and one day international matches.

With West Indies and SriLanka winning, beating the favorites for this world cup, we all certainly hope and expect that this does not follow suit in our case. All we and the players will have to do is look at the Zimbabwe game and see how convincingly they have beaten Namibia and maybe learn from the Zimbabweans. I hope the players do not get either over confident or puts pressure on them unnecessarily. Good wish to all the Bangladeshi players who will be in the first eleven and also to those who will not be in the first eleven. Let the best team win.

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