Bangladesh on the way up

Bangladesh has made it clear that they are on the up, and with their young talent, they will be a force to be reckoned with in time.

Exciting batsmen such as Shahriar Nafees, who looks to be Bangladesh's best batsman, and the unpredictable Mohammad Ashraful, who is outrageously talented but needs better application, have arrived on the scene to go with the consistent Habibul Bashar and Rajin Saleh.

On the bowling front, the ever reliable Mashrafe Mortaza and Mohammad Rafique have been joined by young strike bowler, Shahadat Hossain and talented left arm seamer, Syed Rasel.

Throw in the all round potential of Aftab Ahmed, and the slick wicketkeeping of Khaled Mashud, and we have an international team that is certainly not short of talent.

What they are short of though, is experience. In particular, the experience of winning.

While they performed beyond their wildest dreams in the recently concluded first Test against Australia, they did not win it - even though they were the dominant team for more than half the match.

After the first day, as Bangladesh racked up a Nafees-inspired 355 for 5, Habibul Bashar mentioned that they'd like to bat for 2 more sessions, to effectively make sure that Bangladesh did not lose. Compare that with Adam Gilchrist's innings of 144 from 93 for 6, responding to 427. Earlier, he had said that Australia was still looking for ways to win the match, even as they were struggling to avoid the follow on. The rest is history - Bangladesh crumbled for 148 in their second innings, and Australia tripped over the line by 3 wickets.

The biggest reason for Bangladesh's narrow defeat in this match, and a similar one against Pakistan 3 years ago, is their inexperience in grabbing the decisive moments, and their lack of ruthlessness when their opponent is down, and almost out.

Australia, through their run of domination over the last decade, has turned several matches around through the sheer knowledge of how to turn around hopeless situations and a huge desire to win at all costs, even if the risks might end with defeat.

To turn Bangladesh's undeniable talent into results, they must mix sensible and disciplined cricket with risk - but only when the foundations for a counter attack are firm. It is unlikely that negative play will turn around their losing habit, and they can really do with the self belief that will come with victory, and for the sake of world cricket, I hope they go well.

Cricket needs as many strong teams as possible. The faster they go up, the better. No one will cheer louder than I.