Team - BANGLADESH
ODI Rank – 8
ODI Rating – 66

Last World Cup – Super-8
Finals Appearances – none
Best in a World Cup – Super-8 (’07)

Squad
Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Junaid Siddique, Shahriar Nafees, Raqibul Hasan, Mohammad Ashraful, Mushfiqur Rahim, Naeem Islam, Mahmudullah, Abdur Razzak, Rubel Hossain, Shafiul Islam, Nazmul Hossain, Suhrawadi Shuvo.

Strength – Home conditions, spinners
Weakness – Inconsistent performers

Performance

Bangladesh will enter this world cup as the dark horses and will try to ride their abilities and luck to cause one or many upsets in the group stages. After losing just one of their last 8 home games, B’desh will count as a strong contender for making it through to the knockout phase (if you ignore the fact that they only beat Zimbabwe and a hapless NZ in the recent past) given that they will play all their games at home.

The Bangladeshi squad is built around 3 major qualities – strong opening, handy all rounders and a huge academy of spin bowlers!

Tamim Iqbal will mostly open along with Imrul Kayes, followed by Junai Siddique. Tamim Iqbal, the young southpaw has grown in form and confidence over the last 4 years and has added a range of aggressive strokes through the off side in the duration to his armoury. He was the one who washed out any hopes of India’s comeback the previous time B’desh met India in a World Cup, causing one of the biggest shocks of the league phase. Imrul Kayes will want to make the most of the opportunity given to him now, and play the supporter’s role. Junaid Siddique is the more assuring, technically better off batsmen one would have to look out for. The three left-handers would also cause the bowling side to adjust their bowling a bit, I don’t think there is any other team with 3 top order left handers. SL and WI used to have such a left-handed line up, and not many teams were up to the task of dismissing their line up that easily!

The middle order would consist of Raqibul Hasan or Ashraful. Raqibul has been more dependable than Ashraful in the recent times. Ashraful, once thought of the next-big-thing from Bangladesh, has only two or three memorable innings in the past few years, and one of them came in T20, so, doesn’t count. Both have the talent, but Ashraful is more likely to gift his wicket than Raqibul. Mushfiqur Rahim will be the wicketkeeper, handy with the bat, and can up the ante in the final overs (if B’desh can play till then).

The mainstay of the Bangladeshi team is their league of spinners. Captain Shakib al Hasan, Mahmudullah, Abdur Razzak and Suhrawadi Shuvo are all capable of finding a spot in the XI. Shakib, Razzaka and Shuvo are all left-arm orthodox bowlers. Bot, Razzak and Shuvo flight the ball more than Shakib, who has more of a slinging action. It is tough to opponents to play with a healthy run rate against these spinners, who have their own variations despite almost all being left handed bowlers. Muhmudullah provides a bit of variation, being right handed. If Naeem Islam is given the opportunity as an all-rounder, he too would come on to bowl. So would Md Ashraful. Spin is Bangladesh’s weapon. Maybe, the only weapon.

B’desh will play two fast bowlers, Shafiul Islam and Nazmul Hossain. Their main job would be to get the ball old and hand it over to the spinners. As simple as that. In isolation, both are capable wicket takers, but only Shafiul has the pace to cause any trouble to the batsmen. he has a fast, singing action and puts in a lot of effort to try and extract bounce on unhelping surfaces. Rubel Hossain is the other seamer in the squad, having dropped the crown-favourite Moshrafe Mortaza keeping in mind his current health conditions, the history of his health conditions and probability of him injuring himself again. In the last few series before the world cup, either he hasn’t played them at all, or got injured in the first game of the series. And when he does the latter, B’desh win the series. So, B’desh selectors are taking the chance of winning after eliminating that lucky charm.

Bangladesh will commence the World Cup with the opening game vs India, followed by games vs Ireland, WI, England, Nederlands and South Africa. For a team of Bangladesh’s stature, almost all games are as important as it can be for them to move on to the next round. The game against West Indies will be the world cup’s most important game. The winner of the game is more likely to move on to knock out stage over the other.

Bangladesh couldn’t have had a better preparation and build up to the world cup, than 2 series hosted at home and winning both of them. But, they should not forget that they lost most series before that – in Sri Lanka, England. This time, they are a serious contender for the open QF spot, and it will not be surprising if they can make it. How loudly will the Bangla Tigers roar this time around? Will they reach a stage where they might have to play outside their home? Will they throw more surprises than what one can expect? They are capable, but will they show it?

The biggest event in Bangla’s cricketing history will like them to shine in it too. Comet Feb 19, and we would all know how that unfolds!

The sky is indeed the limit. But nowadays, what lies underneath it, the high frequency radio spectrum has caught the attention of the world trying to go wireless. S-Band frequencies in the 2500 Mhz range have been used by Doordharshan in India for broadcasting television programs. But future technologies which intend to develop into high-speed, terrestrial mobile communications operate in the S-Band. Given the huge money-making potential of this spectrum, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s radar seems to have picked up a signal of an alleged discrepancy in the allotment of spectrum by the Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to the latter’s commercial arm Antrix Corp and Devas Multimedia.

The mists have cleared on a deal that gives Devas Multimedia 70Mhz of S-Band for a 20-year period for the mere sum of 1000 Crore Rupees when the actual cost is alleged to be around 2 lakh crores. They bigger they are, the harder the truth hits us and this scam might eclipse the 1.76 lakh crore 2G spectrum scam. The absence of restrictions on Devas Multimedia sub-leasing their privileges means that the company just caught a goose laying golden eggs and it asked to fed very little.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), which heads the DoS and ISRO, has denied the allegations as usual, saying the absence of an actual sale makes the reported loss of revenue just what it really is, an alleged and speculative one. Devas Multimedia also issued a statement claiming the report cited in leading newspapers as being incorrect.

Wikipedia has a say on everything and Scams in India seems to be a page which, right now seems to be our only progress report.

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July 3, 1971 might not ring a bell for most people except maybe for fans of ‘The Doors’ because it was when their lead singer Jim Morrison was found dead in a bathtub in Paris, France. But the same day might soon come to be celebrated as ‘Open Government Day’ after WikiLeaks’ tagline. It happens to be the birthday of its founder, Julian Assange. Formerly a hacker, Assange is now the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks which is releasing so many confidential cables, military war logs and video footages that it is pulverizing every war, peace and political rhetoric ever uttered about the U.S-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Governments are scrambling into damage control mode but right now there are just too many elephants in the room to tell people they are just imagining things.

On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with supplying the video that on 5th April 2010 10:44 EST, WikiLeaks released.  A classified US military video depicts the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff on July 12, 2007. Efforts by Reuters to obtain the video under the Freedom of Information Act were in vain. The 39 minute and 14 seconds long running video shows how the soldiers engaged and ‘put down’ the civilians which included two reporters.  The outrage and the subsequent explosion of public protests have led to two former specialists involved in the operation, Josh Steiber and Ethan McCord to issue a public apology.

Manning is currently being detained at the U.S Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. His identity was revealed by 29-year old Adrian Lamo. Once a star of the hacker community, Lamo is now being castigated for having ratted out Manning. Lamo was contacted by Manning for help regarding the classified information he intended to make public but Lamo was taken aback by the amount of information that had been lifted by Manning and the way he intended to use it. He feared that this would lead to chaos since, to quote him, “Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. … It’s open diplomacy. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format.” Manning may face upto 52 years in jail if he is found guilty of all the charges that he has been put up for.

But the video seems to be only a small portion of the total classified information leaked to WikiLeaks by Manning. The rest is rumoured to be in the 1.4 GB ‘insurance file’ that WikiLeaks posted following the strong statements issued by the U.S condemning it. This insurance file was put up along with ‘The Afghan War Diaries’, an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. Till now the world has taken a grim view of most civilian casualties and what the Army calls ‘collateral damage’ but WikiLeaks has packed enough shock value in its releases that both wars are being re-assessed from the bottom up and diplomatic ties of other countries with the U.S coming under strain considering the hypocrisy that characterized White House’s stand on terrorism when its own methods of countering it seems to resemble very closely the evil that it claims to be fighting.

Numerous media agencies have identified the informants responsible for some of the reports that figure in the Afghan Diaries and even their location in some instances. Britain’s Channel 4 news reported that a Taliban spokesman had said that the group was scrutinizing the WikiLeak-ed documents to find out and punish the persons who have allied with the U.S and supplying sensitive information that might compromise Taliban operatives.

On a lighter note, the UK Treasury is accepting suggestions for government spending cuts via wikileaks.org for those who want to remain anonymous. With every new WikiLeaks ‘leak’, more suspicions are being confirmed and people are reacting that such leaked cables are only confirming what they already knew and are making emphatic protests to the indictment of Julian Assange under sexual assault charges. Assange says they are politically motivated but being the most prolific spokesperson and creator of WikiLeaks, it is only obvious he will be the target of numerous counter measures by the U.S government.

But legal hassles aside, Assange has redefined sensational journalism and made a paradigm shift in getting whistleblowers a direct audience and making classified information open to public scrutiny. As rightly pointed out in the two following excerpts quoted from the public apology by two former specialists involved in the July 12, 2007 indiscriminate killing of a dozen people in New Baghdad  whose video is rightly called ‘Collateral Murder’:

• “The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighbourhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.”
• “Our secretary of defence may say the U.S. won’t lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation’s importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.”

As with any public reaction, some people see WikiLeaks as a threat to national security including the hacker who exposed the whistle blower of ‘Collateral Murder’, Adrian Lamo. The leaking of the sorority rituals of Alpha Sigma Tau has been cited as an example that WikiLeaks “does not respect the rule of law nor does it honour the rights of individuals” and engages in unrestrained disclosure of non-governmental secrets without compelling public policy reasons. Many anti-corruption activists are opposed to the site’s activities. Russian investigative reporter Andrei Soldatov believes that WikiLeaks is “filling the gap” left by the decline of investigative journalism with a sensationalist alternative while journalistic support of WikiLeaks is motivated by anger over declining funding and resources for investigative reporting.

If governments are critical of WikiLeaks then it is a testament to fact that modern day democracies are capable of and continue to follow flawed war policies and the practise of writing off their war excesses as mere exaggerations. They may deflect saying that not every policy decision must be made public but it imperative they abstain from abusing the authority that the people have bestowed upon them.

The dispute arose over a simple question: ‘If you hog so much on the luggage rack, where do I put my stuff? ’. The course of events started as much as they have done since the caveman days. Caveman One is happy sharing the geological cavity till Caveman Two starts hogging the stone loft. So, grunts are made, some hollering done and they are roomies no more. Well, millions of years later, now we have a more ‘colourful’ language to abuse with.

The accused espied the newcomer fiddling with his suitcases and told him that the top of his head was free. But the victim of this encroachment took it literally and readily obliged. When he almost reached out to the head brain-box with his proposed goods, it greatly pissed off the guy who offered his head and he turned crimson. Discarding niceties, they both resorted to name calling. Dog, Buffalo, Donkey, Pig and other quadrupeds’ names were bandied but never got farther than that. Because at that very instant, civilization kicked in and wagged its finger at both of them in the form of disapproving voices from parents and middle aged men reading The Hindu.

When it is an A/C Chair Car which hosts such aggressive negotiations, it doesn’t mean that Second Class coaches see far worse. No. If you’re travelling in Second Class, what you see at every 10 minute interval are repeatedly relieved passengers who managed to perform Olympian contortions to let the checked-shirt IRCTC food vendor though. Man, Space and luggage are interwoven to form a continuum which stretches and constricts with every jolt and passing vendor. Every passing station leaves with you the reminder that the journey is indeed more important than the destination.

As for the sparring men, soon they got tired of this juvenile name calling and managed to find some luggage space. As the agitation ended, I was driven into thinking just how much civilization do we actually exhibit in such times. Or do we need digital equivalents of everything from friends to festival greetings sent by SMS because we can choose or ignore what we want in the digital world, a far cry from how real life works. People with ego that inflates under a second every time a minor problem arises are just as dangerous to civilization as extremists.

This willy-nilly quirk of Life may result in a discovery of a lifetime or sometimes a soul mate. Even if you are living in China, digging a well with a group of farmers in 1974 would have led you to make the biggest archaeological find: The Terracotta Army. But geographically, if you aren’t in Laos where there are still unexploded Vietnam War era cluster bomblets, it might help to keep your limbs when serendipity decides to check on you.

Science, the occasional headache of the Vatican, has forever been riddled (and a lot of riddles solved) with instances of serendipity. Some fantastic (and some edible) inventions and discoveries are:

• Corn flakes and wheat flakes were discovered by the Kellogg brothers in 1898 when they tried to roll some cooked wheat from the previous day.
• Chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Wakefield. She didn’t have enough chocolate to make chocolate drop cookies, so she broke up the chocolate bar into pieces and placed them in the dough. Voila.
• Infrared radiation by William Herschel. When he put thermometers into the different visible colours where he expected to measure a temperature increase, the ones beyond the red unexpectedly showed a higher temperature than the others, showing that there was non-visible radiation beyond the red end of the visible spectrum.
• Cosmic gamma-ray bursts were discovered in the late 1960s by the US satellites, which were built to detect nuclear tests in the Soviet Union.
• A surprise find is the libido-enhancing effect of l-dopa, a drug which is used for treating Parkinson’s disease. Older patients in a sanatorium had their long-lost interest in sex suddenly revived.
• The chemical element helium by British chemist William Ramsay.
• Discovery of the principle behind inkjet printers by a Canon engineer. He accidentally placed his soldering iron on his pen and ink was ejected from the pen’s point in a few seconds later.
• The Nobel Prize for Physics went to this duo Arno A. Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson when what they thought was excess thermal noise in their antenna at Bell Labs was due to the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), which proved the Big Bang theory.

There is even an antonym for serendipity. Its called zemblanity: making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design. Instances of zemblanity abound much in our lives and we are better off not digging them up and putting them on plaques on the opposite wall to serendipity. Or an unrelated note, Niira Radia might be cursing all the zemblanity in the world but looks like this balloon is just too big to hide it behind even the collective backs of those artful dodgers.

Most anticipated movies of 2011

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Releasing on July 1 this year, the third instalment of the Transformers franchise is expected to let us find out more about the former Cybertron dwellers. The trailer shows a classified operation of the Apollo 11 mission which might have uncovered a secret on the dark side of the moon. Till now, we do not know if we get to see Unicron, a robot who can transform into a mechanical planet and also is capable of destroying smaller planets. Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) does not appear in this sequel, standing in her stead is Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley).

One for the Money

When you wake up on the morning of July 8 this year, Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl), grudgingly living life unemployed, manages to convince her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie (Patrick Fischler), to try her hand as a bounty hunter. Her first task is to raid the city in search of a former cop, Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara), who is wanted for murder and also was her former lover. She enlists the help of some her friends and the best bounty hunter there is for now, Ranger (Daniel Sunjata). But her new job slowly and surely gets her to find out what it really takes to be a bounty hunter. The film is based on the first novel in writer Janet Evanovich’s bestselling Stephanie Plum series.

Cars 2

Pixar fans better take the day off on June 24, 2011 for the sequel to the hugely popular animation feature ‘Cars’ hits the silver screen in 3D. If you are the lucky ones near ‘select theatres’, double the fun in IMAX 3D. Race car Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) and the inimitable tow truck Mater (voice of Larry the Cable Guy) set out compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix to determine the world’s fastest. But things aren’t just getting racy on the tarmac when his friend Mater gets caught up in a dangerous game of international espionage.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Hide the rum on May 20, 2011 because the freewheeling pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is back and is ready to weigh anchor. A mysterious woman from his past, Angelica (Penelope Cruz) comes back into his life and appears to desire the coveted Fountain of Youth. Forced on board of the pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) by her, Captain Sparrow must fathom the intentions of Angelica while steering clear of mortal danger that the search for the Fountain of youth entails.

Hangover 2

The tiger handling trio of Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) return on May 26, 2011 for the sequel of Hangover, which redefined everything that guys do when it gets one drink too many in a bachelor party.
The trio travels to Thailand for Stu’s (Ed Helms) wedding in this sequel. When Stu opts for a nice pre-wedding brunch without the frills, the trio make sure it becomes one for the books.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

A modern day tale of a enduring Love, this time returning for a fourth instalment of the story chronicling Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) fight to make sense of the world torn between werewolves, humans and vampires. She must decide whether to choose a life without love or leave behind her normal human life for her love. It dawns on November 18, 2011.

X-Men: First Class

Everything has a beginning. And every beginning has it’s causes. This June 3, 2011 find out why the X-Men were gathered by Professor Charles Xavier to counter the machinations of Magneto’s Brotherhood. But before that they were inseparable friends and together they were discovering their mutant powers. Their first fight to save the world causes friction in their ideologies and eventually leads to the X-Men saga as we know it.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Crime will pay on July 22, 2011. Captain America, the crime fighting alter ego of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) with his indestructible shield is the result of Operation: Rebirth. A special experiment that turned a Steve Rogers, once a frail boy rejected by the army, into a perfect bodied human who then underwent training to become who he is now, the guardian of justice and the leader of The Avengers.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) must stop Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) even if it means to sacrifice his own life in the process. The seven horcruxes which ensure Voldemort’s indestructibility must be located and destroyed. But this perilous search will only end in the biggest mortal danger of all: challenging the Dark Lord himself. Movie release on July 15, 2011.

The Green Hornet

Adapted from the successful radio series that spawned a comic book series and a TV series which ran for one season but found Bruce Lee instant stardom, now comes the movie which has the masked crime-fighting duo Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) as the Green Hornet and his trusty sidekick Kato (Jay Chou). After his father’s death, Reid realizes the resources he inherited can be put to good use and teams up with an employee, Kato who also builds him the indestructible Black Beauty, a car with a weapon for every need imaginable. With help from Reid’s secretary Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) they must stop the villain, Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz). Catch the action on January 14, 2011.

Thor

Another Marvel universe opens up this May 6, 2011. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a mighty but arrogant warrior who is sent to Earth by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) from Asgard, his home, to live as a human. He finds love in Jane foster (Natalie Portman) a young scientist but must first find a way to stop the unrelenting villain but also his adoptive brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from unleashing the dark forces of Asgard upon Earth. Releases on April 27, 2011.

Kung Fu Panda 2

The funny and unstoppable Po, who is now Master Po (voiced by Jack Black) takes off with his friends Master Tigress (voiced by Angelina Jolie), Master Monkey (voiced by Jackie Chan), Master Crane (voiced by David Cross), Master Viper (voiced by Lucy Liu), Master Mantis (voiced by Seth Rogen) in search of other pandas. Help is at hand from a peacock (voiced by Gary Oldman) but nothing is as it seems in this sequel to the insanely popular Kung Fu Panda.  Get ready for some great kung fu action on May 27, 2011.

Green Lantern

The Green Lantern Corps are an intergalactic order of peacekeepers, each possessing a ring called the Green lantern that grants them superpowers to help them with their duty. Find out on June 17, 2011 how Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) a daring test pilot, becomes the first human to be selected as a Green Lantern Corp. He must prove that he can learn to use the ring judiciously. Inspired by the help from his fellow pilot and sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) he overcomes his fears and finds it in himself to even take on the evil Parallax who intends to deal a fatal blow to the peace of the universe.

Season of the Witch

January 7, 2011 will see Behman (Nicholas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman), Crusaders in the Middle Ages who find their homeland ravaged by The Plague. A girl is accused of being the cause of this decimating disease and the Church Elders decide to perform a ritual to end this curse. The duo uncover a secret about the girl’s life which takes them on a dangerous journey to stop an evil force that threatens humanity itself.

Sherlock Holmes 2

The world famous analytical genius Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his friend/chronicler Dr.Watson (Jude Law) find more than a match in Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). But will Holmes manage to bring the super-villain to justice in this action mystery sequel? Guy Ritchie returns to direct and takes us through 19^th century London as the two geniuses try to outsmart each other on December 16, 2011.