This rivalry, inane and macho, is not one we needed or deserved, but it’s the one we have got
Andrew Fidel Fernando and Mohammad Isam15-Mar-2024A team of grown men pointing at their wrists with intent to provoke, a dance mockingly traded for years, a shattered dressing room door, a timed-out dismissal, press conference tantrums, on-field aggro – in this column we will attempt to intellectualise that which is resplendently unintellectual: the rivalry between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.Theirs is a conflict born of precisely jack-all. Where into the Ashes are braided hundreds of years of colonial angst and references to convict ancestry, where India vs Pakistan is clouded by dark history and the threat of nuclear conflict, and where even Afghanistan vs Pakistan connects to a porous border and ongoing geopolitical strife, Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh brings no serious national tensions to the table.Bangladesh has a been a creditor to Sri Lanka during the latter’s economic crisis. Both Bengali and Sinhala (one of Sri Lanka’s main languages) are thought to have descended from the same proto-East Indian language. And in one of the opening scenes of , one of the most critically acclaimed Sinhala language shows of the last few years, the protagonist pretends he’s Bangladeshi to impress a girl on the bus.Related
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On the cricket front Sri Lanka has functioned as a model for Bangladesh’s own rise. The BCB literally went out and hired Dav Whatmore, the 1996 World Cup-winning coach; Sri Lankan coaches and curators have long plied their trade in Bangladesh; and players such as Athula Samarasekara, who are little thought of on their own island, have been much beloved Dhaka Premier League stars.Into this general background of top-tier good times and the chillest possible vibes have stomped Sri Lanka’s and Bangladesh’s male cricketers like herds of filthy water buffalo rampaging through a serene flower-laden valley. They have demanded undue attention, twisted unimportant topics into questions of national pride, and turned what used to be fun little international fixtures into festivals of completely unasked-for testosterone.Why did Mushfiqur Rahim mockingly do the repertoire once again
Nov 6, 2023: During the ODI World Cup, Angelo Mathews becomes the first player to be timed out in international cricket after Shakib appeals. An angry Mathews gestures to his wrist when he dismisses Shakib during Bangladesh’s innings and blasts him after the game for sticking to the appeal
Mar 4, 2024: Shoriful Islam mimics Mathews by tapping his wrist
Mar 9, 2024: Sri Lanka team celebrates T20I series win with the wrist-tapping, timed-out gesture
From Bangladesh’s perspective, Sri Lanka played them so often, they should know best of all how they no longer wet themselves in sight of victory. Any minor slight from Sri Lanka is taken as their intentionally refusing to clock Bangladesh’s new place in the pecking order.On top of this you also have Sri Lanka’s denial of their own recent decline. This is a nation that won the 1996 ODI World Cup, the 2014 T20 World Cup, and a bunch of Asian championships. Meanwhile they did not qualify for the next Champions Trophy, partly by dint of Bangladesh having beaten them at the last World Cup. There are hard truths on the table, waiting to be swallowed. But Sri Lanka do not have the stomach for it. They’d rather start fights than do the thing that will make them feel better. Like toddlers at meal time.There is, of course, a solid argument that actually this Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh thing is the ideal sporting rivalry. That it makes the world a livelier place, rather than just a stupider one. Because why would you want your sports drama to be underwritten by actual nation-level jeopardy? This way you all get riled up and go home knowing your governments are not going to take cues from your behaviour.Nurul Hasan gets up in Thisara Perera’s face during a 2018 instalment of the festivities•AFPAnd perhaps even the players understand this. Off the field, they seem to generally get along. Most recently Janith Liyanage went as far as to call the opposition wicketkeeper “Mushfiqur ” – “” not being a word that exists in any Sri Lankan language. But when they cross the boundary, the melodrama is ramped up, like with wrestlers in a WWE match, with all the over-egged aggro and the gesticulating. So many Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka confrontations bear the same macho silliness as oversized men fake-wrestling each other in too-tight underpants.There is always the hope this rivalry will cease to seriously exist, since there is no reason for it to. But it invariably finds new and inane expressions, In the last few days Bangladesh’s white-ball captain Najmul Hossain Shanto has said Sri Lanka were “in a frenzy” still, over Mathews’ months-old timed-out dismissal. This has obviously caused consternation in the Sri Lanka camp, who are very capable of whipping themselves up into a tornado in defence of their obviously unshakeable island calm.Then after the first ODI, Bangladesh coach Chandika Hathurusinghe praised Mushfiqur for “putting Wanindu Hasaranga in his place”, by attacking him early. Hasaranga has not replied publicly yet, but he is not the kind of player for whom letting things slide is in the top two dozen options.And so it rolls into another series, into another season.This is not a rivalry that anyone asked for. It is not the rivalry the cricket world deserves. It is not the one we need right now. But it is the one we got.
