[Rubu]

Oh! What a relief, a win after five long, long years. The U19 team beating Australia gave Bangladesh cricket fans some real hope in a situation where win were synonymous to impossible. We fans could get consolation by thinking that even though the senior team is not good enough, we just need to wait for the junior team to be in full bloom. That will end our miserable days. Big relief for us, we did not have to wait so long. Our national team might be inspired by their little brothers, or who knows, may be they are ashamed of their performance comparing them to the junior team. Whatever the reason is, Whatmore’s hard work paid of on the very next match. The most important thing in this match is that we won by team work. Even though we lost in our second match, it made us even happier. The performance in the second match showed that our win was no fluke as suggested by Whatmore. A five year long fruitless period has ended!
If we look back now, we can see that this five years was not completely fruitless. I’d say, the best achievement in this time period is the discovery of some key players such as Rajin Saleh and Mohammad Ashraful. Yeah, we did discover some players in this time period who will definitely be in the key role to lead our country. Lets see, who else is there? Alok Kapali? No doubt Whatmore has got another lethal weapon in his arsenal, but we don’t know yet how well this weapon will be able to use itself. There is a limit to what Whatmore can do, and the rest are up to Alok to use the gifted talent. Then, there is the very recent discovery, Manjural Islam Rana. Even though he has a very high test average of 52.50 and ODI average of 23.00, it does not tell all about him. He already has above 1000 first class run, and no one can say his bowling is useless. According to Whatmore, Rana does whatever he is told to do. God! Is not this exactly what we need, a very consistent all-rounder? I know, this analogy is not true. Even so, just picture this, Rana is in the 4th ODI team adding an additional 20 runs. We were so close to another win, all we needed was another steady hand in lower-middle order. No doubt, Sujon did well on the 3rd ODI, and we won whenever he does well. Nevertheless, we have to remember that it took him five years to do good again. Who knows how long it might take for him to do good again. Why not we change him with someone who has better average than him in both bowling and batting, and is a very consistent player?
Rana’s performance in the test matches proved that he has every right to be in the final eleven. His past ODI performance is quite good too. There cannot be any reason to not give him a chance in ODI to prove himself. Apparently he improved a lot since he played the last ODI and his hard work should be rewarded. If we do not include in the 5th ODI, it could have several bad effect on him. Not only it increases our chance to loose, it also will disappoint him if he cannot be in the final eleven when he really deserves it. Above all, there is a hole in the team right now. He can nicely and effectively fill it up. Result? We can still dream about a series win!!!

[Edited on 12-3-2004 by AgentSmith]