Fan Following
Before Bangladesh had even secured Test status, cricket fans in the country took the game seriously; when the team lost an ODI against Kenya in March 1999 several hundred fans protested outside the offices of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). On learning of Bangladesh's promotion to Test status, thousands of people celebrated on the streets. Then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina remarked that "I can't express my joy in words at this happiest hour of the nation". At the time cricket was the second-most popular sport in the country behind football. When Bangladesh began its first Test match on 10 November 2000 at Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka, the stadium was nearly full on the first day as around 40,000 people watched the team take on India. As the match partly overlapped with the festival of Shab-e-Barat, numbers attending declined as the match progressed. In 2011, Bangladeshi politician Saber Hossain Chowdhury
opined that "In Bangladesh cricket is not simply a game, it is a symbol of national unity", and in the words of AHM Mostofa Kamal, president of the BCB in 2011, "People of take cricket religiously".
When Bangladesh are victorious, the fans sometimes take to the streets in celebration. When Bangladesh defeated South Africa in the 2007 World Cup, thousands of people celebrated into the night on the streets of Dhaka despite there being a ban on public gatherings at the time. Although fans are jubilant in victory, they can also be vocal in defeat. When Bangladesh lost to England in an ODI in November 2003, the then captain Khaled Mahmud was booed off the field. During the 2011 World Cup, Bangladesh succumbed to a record defeat against West Indies, registering the team's lowest score in ODIs. The buses of both teams were stoned (Bangladesh's intentionally, West Indies' mistakenly), as was Shakib Al Hasan's house.
Read more about this topic: Bangladesh National Cricket Team
Famous quotes containing the word fan:
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—Chinese proverb.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)