In the recent past, Bangladesh have played a lot of T20 internationals at the biggest stages, especially at the T20 World Cup 2021 and the 3-match series against Pakistan.
Playing combined 11 matches in both the tournaments, Bangladesh managed to win only 2 against Oman and Papua New Guinea. The recent World Test Championship performances are not enough to make the fans hope for a successful Test series against Pakistan either.
As far as the on-field performances and results are concerned, Bangladesh cricket seems to be at a low point. But what about the off-field activities, the social media, the fans etc.?
Things do not look very impressive either as BCB is not making a great image of them with myriads of mistakes and indications of unprofessionalism.
The old-fashioned way of selling the tickets
As the COVID-19 effect still prevails in the country, BCB allowed a maximum of 50 per cent of the capacity of the SBNCS to enjoy the match from the stadium.
The people who have received two doses of the Coronavirus vaccine were eligible to buy the tickets, but the procedure for buying the tickets wasn't made online. In fact, just like the early 2010s, the spectators had to stand in a queue for the tickets, where maintaining the social distance was difficult.
This caught a lot of fans by surprise, as they could buy their tickets online on many occasions previously, but not this time around.
Ordinary kit designs
Just after the design of the latest kit for the T20 series against Pakistan was posted on social media, it faced a lot of criticism. The fans did not seem to like the shiny red stripe on the chest with tiger marks on it.
According to many, the logo of the title sponsor, 'Daraz', should have been smaller than it was. After the T20 World Cup's retro kit, the Pakistan Series' one was taken as a downgrade by the public.
Social-media blunders
Bangladesh Cricket's official Facebook page, 'Bangladesh Cricket: The Tigers' made a blunder during the 3rd T20I between Bangladesh and Pakistan. The debutant pacer, Shohidul Islam picked up the big wicket of Mohammad Rizwan, as he bowled him out in the 16th over.
To post this fact on social media, the official page used a photo of the Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib al Hasan wearing the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 kit.
The photo of Shakib they used was a popular one and for most of the regular followers of cricket, the fact that they morphed Shohidul's head on Shakib's picture was easy to notice.
The tickets and the printing mistake
Imagine a Test match that starts just 2 hours before midnight, under the floodlights. According to the tickets of the 1st Test between Bangladesh and Pakistan to be played at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, Chittagong, this was supposed to happen on 26 November 2021.
The Day-1 tickets of the 1st Test presented '10:00 pm' as the starting time of the match and as usual, the fans on social media didn’t spare this chance to troll, criticise and make fun of this massive mistake.
Bangladesh is misspelt
The team sheet covering the 1st Test between Bangladesh and Pakistan provided to the journalists had an error that the people responsible should have noticed easily.
The 'Event' row of the top-left table of the sheet had “Alesha Holdings 'Bamgladesh' vs Pakistan Test series." written in it. Nobody had noticed the fact that they misspelt 'Bangladesh,’ the country's name before printing the copies of the team sheet.
While the on-field activities and match results should be the main concerns for a nation's cricket board, the off-field and social media activities should be done with proper responsibility as they also represent the country's cricket.
An array of errors can even make a mockery of the cricket of a country, especially through social media trolls and criticism. After the recent blunders, the fans can only hope that the cricket board's printing and social media, designing team and policymakers will learn from these and do things ‘professionally.’
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