MELBOURNE: The 2007 upset still quite fresh in their minds, all that the Bangladeshi journalists obsessed over during their interaction with star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan was the percentage of the team’s chances of an encore in the cricket World Cup quarterfinal against India here.
There were some passionate queries and they would refuse to accept anyone who would tell them that Bangladesh has less than 40 percent chance of winning against India the MCG on Thursday.
In fact, Shakib had to remain patient as he answered repeated queries on how everyone wants the team to do a repeat of 2007 when Port of Spain had become ‘Port of Pain’ for Rahul Dravid’s men.
The reference of the 2007 victory was brought in English and Bengali at least five times during the lengthy media interaction.
The second most asked question was “what is the percentage of Bangladesh’s chance against India”. The third question that appeared in the loop was expectation of people back home.
Sample this. During the English session, one of the Bangladeshi scribes asked Shakib, “Experts are not giving us more than 10 percent chance, what do you have to say about this?”
To this Shakib gave a very practical reply.
“I don’t know. It depends on the day. We need to start well. If we keep that momentum anything is possible. Yes, on paper, India is a better team than Bangladesh. No one has any doubt about it. On the day it’s a one-off game. If we have a good day and they have a bad day, you never know.”
But the ‘Percentage Story’ didn’t end there. When the Bengali round started, one of the scribes then asked, “Our people back home want to know what is the percentage that you would like to quote as far as our chances of winning is concerned. Would you say it’s 50 percent?”
A smiling Shakib did reply but the sarcasm was not lost on anyone. (AGENCIES)
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