There is all the restoration and, in certain instances innovation, we need to go for in Bangladesh. The objective is simple. We need to convince ourselves that our cultural and social traditions are yet part of us, heritage which we ought to uphold before the world outside our frontiers.
Take the matter of football. In light of the recent triumph of our women footballers in Kathmandu, much discussion has been generated about their performance. That has only rekindled in us memories of the times when, before cricket invaded our sports world, football excited our collective imagination.
At Dhaka stadium, season after season and year after year, it was the football league which drew us into watching Mohamedan, Abahani, Brothers Union, Dhaka Wanderers and all those other teams on weekends and even on weekdays. We screamed ourselves hoarse pitching for our favourite teams. Of course, there were the battles fought on the streets, the fist fights post-game, between fans. But the excitement was there all the same.
In our villages, poverty-stricken boys found in football, which they played with that most wonderful of fruits, the jamboora, a hold on life, something that gave meaning to their otherwise humdrum existence. Villages competed in regular soccer competitions, with teams sometimes bringing in players from outside the region. Young and old alike watched those games, in the spaces of which much comment, some wise and some rather inane, went on. Mirth was in the air.
Those were interesting times. Young people spent hours debating the strengths and weaknesses of players. There were, at the stadium in Dhaka, those disturbing moments when referees came under verbal and sometimes physical assault for what was perceived to be questionable decisions they made on the field.
But it was all part of the game. We loved to see our players run, skirt around their opponents, dribble and rush forward to lob that ball into the rival team's net as a hapless goal-keeper lay flat on the ground.
Football was a game which aroused in us all the energy we could muster, as fans of the various teams even as the players fought it out, muscular legs and sheer speed combined, on the field. On the stands, spectators overwhelmed by the thrill of the game, lifted their feet as they saw their team draw close to the rival team's net.
As the ball flew into that net, many of these spectators, blissfully unmindful of the people in the row before them, screamed 'Goal!' and landed forceful kicks on the backs of those people. In the next few seconds, both those who had delivered the kicks and their recipients were reconciled, in sportsman-like spirit.
That was football in those days, before cricket came in. It is time we as people proud of our sports traditions went back to football. There is little point in speaking of the glory our women footballers have come home with if on home ground we are not able to recreate the magic that once defined our football.
The Bengali is nothing without football, besides his rice and fish and daal. Of course, now that cricket has entered our sports lexicon, we expect our cricketers to shine in the times ahead. But just as our cricket has made inroads into the global arena, we are in intense requirement of not only a restoration of football in the country but also look to a future where our footballers could shape dreams of being part of the World Cup.
Playing football on the global stage is a tough calling, which is reason for us to focus, initially, on regional soccer tournaments. And even as we do that, our attention must remain riveted on that distant goal of our footballers playing before a global audience.
There are the programmes we need to undertake before our dreams can assume the form of reality. Dreams, when they are prolonged, dwindle into daydreams. And lest that happen, it should be for schools in the rural interior of the country as also its urban centres to formulate strategies aimed at developing the game among children.
The best footballers in the world have risen from humble backgrounds, which is why we must concentrate on training the young in the spirit and style of the game from early on. Besides schools, the football federation should be devising a programme that will, countrywide, have it supervise the reinvention of the sport together with the creation of a new generation of footballers.
Football is a sport for all citizens, for nothing elitist comes attached to it. It draws all citizens into it, in their vicarious experience as players even as they experience the thrill and the despair, as the case may be, on the field.
Be it on a field of rock-like, uncompromising soil in a village or a modern-day stadium in a town, football tournaments bring all people together. Sharing in the enthusiasm arising out of the game is what gives it a universal quality.
And that enthusiasm comes through the spectacle of footballers running hard, perspiring and yet not giving up in their determination to win the game. One of the teams loses in the end, of course. But what happens before that is what constitutes the glory of the game. The energy packed in those sweating players is transferred to spectators, all of whom, munching peanuts, have their gaze glued to the soccer field.
The sight of players bumping into one another in their attempt to 'head' the ball landing on them and both collapsing on the grass; the cries of 'foul' from the spectators; the referee quick with the yellow card, sometimes with the red; extra time, failing to produce any result, going into penalty time, with players and spectators holding their breath in suspense, and praying mightily before the Creator --- these are the appeal of football.
And these are the football moments, in broad measure, which bring people together --- away from their quotidian worries, away from their partisan politics. Football is the game of the masses and therefore a symbol of national unity.
In his youth, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was an ardent football player and so was his father, both of whom had occasion to play for rival teams. In our youth, players like Salahuddin, Major Hafiz and so many others once were shining lights in our football firmament. Our uncles and cousins dirtied themselves in the mud playing the game.
We need a new generation of footballers in this land. We need to have football restored to its perch as Bangladesh's national game.
