With two minutes remaining in the second quarter, the giant, new, China-made electronic scoreboard at the Maulana Bhasani stadium in Dhaka read 5-0. Spectators ditched the stands for the exit gates as the Indian team formed a celebratory sky-blue huddle on the ultramarine blue turf. The Asia Cup hockey group stage match was to eventually end 7-0, completing both India's dominance and Bangladesh's ignominy.
The result wasn't unexpected. It was the severity of the scoreline that the gathering had been hoping against.
A week later, though, Bangladesh upset a higher-ranked China 4-3, their first win in four matches, to assure themselves of sixth position in the tournament.
It's the first time in over three decades that the country is hosting the tournament in a sport that is, at best, a distant third after cricket and football. A yawning gulf in rankings between Bangladesh (lowest-placed among Asian countries, just below Trinidad & Tobago at No. 34) and its sub-continental neighbours is one sign of the problem. The country's hockey side has never featured in an Olympic Games or World Cup and finished between 19th and 28th in the World League.
So what exactly has led Bangladesh hockey into the abyss? It would have to be a cocktail of factors, a combination of financial and administrative duress, lack of turfs, players and professionalism and interest around the sport in the country hovering around the apathetic. With so much going wrong, it's tough for the national team to get its results right.
"We don't expect ourselves to beat teams like India or Pakistan," says tournament director Mamanur Rashid, "But at least a goal or two, a fighting match, that's what fans come looking for."
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If we have to get down to the broad, most compelling reasons for Bangladesh hockey being stuck in a rut, we'd have to start with ground realities.
The grand total of artificial turfs in Bangladesh stands at two - in the Maulana Bhasani stadium and the national sports institute, Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan (BKSP), both in the capital city of Dhaka. That's one main reason why the country's traditional feeder channel of players from districts and tribal regions dried up, undermining the sport's growth in Bangladesh by a worrying degree.
The current national team members are almost all BKSP products. "There are no players from regions like Faridpur, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Chittagong, traditionally considered hockey pockets, anymore," Sanat Babla, a journalist from Bangladesh daily Kaler Kantho says, "Hockey is now totally BKSP-centric and there is virtually nothing played outside Dhaka. Whatever players they produce, that's how good Bangladesh hockey will be. So how far can really we go?"
The existing set-up is riddled with pressing questions. The 12-team Premier Division League, the top-most tier of competitive hockey in Bangladesh, faces the accusation of being over-reliant on foreign players and offering locals little opportunity. The rules allow each team to field five foreign players at the same time. But the quality of foreign players doesn't match the concession; where previously players like Indian stars Mohammad Shahid and Dhanraj Pillay played in the league, it's now home to players predominantly from Pakistan, Kenya and Malaysia. The Indians have moved on to greener turf in Europe.
The national championship was conducted in April this year after a two-year break, with 40 participating teams. However, some big names were missing after they chose to play in German leagues. Ironically, the Bangladesh Hockey Federation (BHF) even considered halting the championship to allow top players to compete in the foreign league. At the grassroots level, a fresh direction was sought through school hockey, which was conducted for two successive years (2014 & 15) before being hit by a money crunch. "We had a very good response with more than 400 schools participating and scholarships being offered to promising boys but lack of finances forced us to discontinue the program for two years now," Abdus Sadeque, BHF general secretary and first captain of liberated Bangladesh, says. The yearly assistance of $30,000 that BHF receives from the National Sports Council too is paltry. It barely suffices for the federation's administrative expenses, with tournaments, national camps and foreign tours all hinging on the benevolence of corporate houses.
Consumed by administrative troubles, BHF has also struggled to keep its house in order and run its domestic leagues on schedule. For the past 12 months, both the Premier League as well as the first division league have not been conducted. BHF pins the dry domestic calendar on hosting three international tournaments in 14 months -- the U-18 Asia Cup in September last year, the Hockey World League round two this March and now the Asia Cup.
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To raise public interest in the tournament, Sadeque says, banners had been placed all over Dhaka, roadshows on horse carts organised and free entry for all matches offered, but that still didn't suffice in bringing in crowds in droves.
The 1985 Asia Cup, the first time Bangladesh hosted the tournament and also the last time it was played on grass, had set off a huge wave of interest in the sport. Starting off with a 3-1 win over Iran, courtesy a Jumman Lusai hat-trick in the opening half, Bangladesh went on to draw against Japan and China before a hard-fought 1-0 loss to eventual champions Pakistan. Bangladesh finished the tournament in sixth place, ahead of China, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Iran. Enthusiastic children and teenagers, from villages across the country, broke off branches of trees to use as hockey sticks and the interest picked up pace quickly and spread wide. But with little effort made to sustain the crazy momentum, it died a natural death.
This time, the tournament is expected to have no such far-reaching effect. "Unlike football, where one ball suffices for an entire neighborhood, hockey has grown into an expensive sport," Sadeque says, "Even cricket, for that matter, is more popular in our smaller towns as 'tape tennis' (South Asian version of street cricket where a tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape for greater weight and speed is used), has many takers because there's money in the sport in the long run. That's not the case in hockey."
There's more than just gulf in quality and experience that holds Bangladesh back in the sport. On the eve of their match against India, for instance, Bangladesh players waited for hours for the ground to be watered before their training session but the water pump couldn't be turned on because there was no electricity. Power was restored only after four hours and the practice session had to be cancelled. Discipline issues too have flared during the tournament. During their match against Pakistan earlier in the tournament, one of the players had, reportedly, turned up without his jersey, much to the consternation of coach Mahbub Harun.
Additionally, being the weakest team in almost any given international tournament hasn't made life any easier for Bangladesh. Ahead of the Asia Cup, their request for practice games was cold-shouldered by other countries, says Sadeque. "We are not new to countries turning us down because they see no merit in warming up with the bottom-placed team. This time for instance, India asked us to pay for everything including boarding and even the pitch if we were to come to Bengaluru for practice matches. We didn't have so much money to spare. Finally, China offered to host us."
While, expectedly, there's no madcap frenzy around the tournament itself, what it might have set in motion is a quiet but firm push towards greater facilities for the sport in the country. The Maulana Bhasani stadium underwent refurbishments costing nearly Tk 16.5 crore ($2 million), which includes installation of floodlights for the first time, a power sub-station, an electronic scoreboard and improved drainage facilities, in the run-up to the Asia Cup.
BHF has been in talks with both its sports ministry as well as planning ministry to lay turfs in divisional towns over the next couple of years. "Our situation isn't always going to be this way. Once there are more playing pitches, the number of players will rise significantly. Also like India, we need more professionalism in our functioning and approach," Sadeque says. Hope also rests on the next brood of players who currently form the Under-18 side. They beat India 5-4 in the pool stages of the U-18 Asia Cup in September last year before they lost by the same scoreline in the dying seconds of the final against India.
Pretty much like the rest of the subcontinent, Bangladesh's love for Bollywood is self-revelatory. The ubiquitous Chak De India number, synonymous with sporting events, ranging from cricket to luge, in India, curiously came on the sound system in Dhaka as both the India and Bangladesh teams went through their final paces ahead of their pool stage encounter. For a song built to stir even the most unmoved Indian native, to have found place in a match outside the country, with India up against the hosts, was obviously bizarre. Beyond nation and nationality, victory and defeat, the intended theme was probably a call to the underdogs. It didn't matter that the hope was borrowed.