Bangladesh ended their 36-years wait for a gold medal in the Asian Games when its cricket team romped to a five-wicket victory over Afghanistan in the final in Guangzhou on Friday.
The journey began with the 1974 Tehran Games, but Bangladesh’s name was not in the medals list until boxer Mosharraf Hossain broke the deadlock in light heavyweight category in the 1986 Seoul meet winning a bronze.
This could have been Bangladesh’s sole medal in years had kabaddi not been included in the next Asiad in Beijing in 1990. Bangladesh won their first silver from kabaddi in the inaugural final and the national sport gave the country at least one medal on each occasion since then.
Kabaddi retained their silver in the next edition in Hiroshima in 1994 only for their status to be demoted as bronze medallists four years later in Bangkok.
Kabaddi team bounced back in the Busan 2002 Games to regain their silver. But again they lost it to Pakistan in Doha in 2006. For the first time Bangladesh men’s kabaddi team failed to win any medal in Guangzhou, but the women’s team saved their faces by winning bronze in women’s kabaddi, which has been added for first time to the Asian Games.
However, it was cricket that helped Bangladesh to shrug off their ‘one-sport nation’ tag as they earned a gold and a silver medal respectively in the men’s and women’s events.
The game was first introduced in the Guangzhou Games and Bangladesh made their mark on the very first occasion. It was also for the first time that any cricket competition held on Chinese soil and Bangladesh fully deserved their success. The pitch at the Guanggong cricket stadium was laid by a Bangladeshi curator and the side, led by veteran Mohammad Ashraful, felt truly at home.
This was the second gold medal for Bangladesh from a multi-sport event in the year as they were also the winners in the SA Games cricket held in Dhaka earlier this year.
With the gold medal in Guangzhou, Bangladesh now touched the summit in every leading multi-sport competition apart from Olympics. It remains to be seen if they need to wait for an Olympic gold until cricket is included in the world’s biggest sporting event in the future.
