India lost all three of its league games at the second men’s World Cup in 1979, falling to even Sri Lanka, who at the time didn’t have Test status. That didn’t cause much of a stir since limited-overs cricket was seen as a hit-and-giggle game by both players and officials as well as by the spectators who didn’t have high expectations for their favorite players.
All of that changed four years later when Kapil Dev’s team rewrote history and transformed one-day cricket by tearing the form and prediction book to pieces. Champions in 1983, India advanced to the semifinals in 1987, played hard and won a few games in 1992, but were again eliminated in the semifinals, reached the Super Six in England in 1999, and advanced all the way to the final in 2003 before losing to Australia.
There were high hopes when Rahul Dravid took India to the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean. Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, the captain, Yuvraj Singh, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni made up India’s outstanding batting order, while Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Harbhajan Singh, and Anil Kumble made up the potent bowling unit. Since only the top two teams from Group B advanced to the next round, India’s qualifying was seen as only a formality. They were put in the group with Bangladesh, Bermuda, and Sri Lanka.
In a shocking upset that rocked the world of cricket, Bangladesh bowled out powerful India for 191 in their first match at Port of Spain, losing by five wickets, with youthful guns Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim, and Shakib Al Hasan all scoring half-centuries. When Sri Lanka defeated them a few days later, it was India’s saddest World Cup moment. Even though Dravid had led the Test team to a series victory in the Caribbean the year before and would do so in England a few months after the World Cup misadventure, his legacy as captain would always be the disaster in the land of the Calypso. Greg Chappell resigned as coach within weeks.
In all forms, India has outperformed Bangladesh by a wide margin. In ODIs, Big Brother has a 31-8 advantage after 40 matches, but in 50-over games, Bangladesh has won three of the previous four, including the Asia Cup in Colombo last month. When it comes to player behavior, there is something about India that draws the best out of Bangladesh and something about India that brings the worst out of Bangladesh.
It’s unclear precisely when the Bangladeshis were enraged about this non-rivalry. Perhaps it was in January 2010 when captain Sehwag, filling in for an injured Dhoni, said before a Test match, “Bangladesh are an average team. They are unable to capture 20 wickets, hence they cannot defeat India. When Rohit Sharma was caught on the boundary off a full toss in the World Cup semifinal in Melbourne, maybe it intensified further when the ball was adjudged to be over waist height and so a no-ball in March 2015. Perhaps it culminated a year later in Bengaluru at the T20 World Cup when Bangladesh needed ten runs to win off five pitches. Mushfiqur smashed two fours and erupted in jubilation before becoming the first of three batters to be struck out in a row, giving India a one-run victory. Or perhaps—and most likely—it was some mixture of all of the aforementioned factors, made worse by Bangladesh’s failure to finish the task in spite of Bangladesh’s near encounters with India in the 2019 World Cup in England and the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
As they prepare for Thursday’s match in Pune against the marauding hosts, Bangladesh’s morale will undoubtedly have been much boosted by their 2-1 triumph at home in December. However, they will be mindful that India won’t be as understanding at home or on the World Cup stage. India now has a three-match winning run, whereas Bangladesh has lost two straight games after winning its first match against Afghanistan. Shakib’s team must run if they are to advance to the semifinals, but they will have to deal with India, who often rises to the challenge in competitions of this stature. Shakib recently stated that Bangladesh’s toughest opponent is often emotion; Thursday will be an excellent day for logical thinking and sound judgment.
