On a bright evening at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata yesterday, Scotland took the field against the West Indies to begin their campaign in the ICC T20 World Cup -- a stage that was originally meant for Bangladesh, not the Scots.
The gallery looked bare, there was no sea of green, no red-and-green flags rippling in the stands, no thunderous chants of “Bangladesh, Bangladesh” that accompany the Tigers everywhere they play.
At the same hour, a few hundred kilometres away at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur, Bangladesh’s legendary band Miles stepped onto the stage as a different sort of spectacle commenced -- one not born out of joy, but of repair.
After deciding not to take part in the T20 World Cup, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) knew it would leave behind a vacuum -- a mix of disappointment, resentment and heartbreak among fans.
To fill that emptiness, a tournament -- Odommo Bangladesh T20 Cup -- was hastily assembled, a three-team event featuring national team players and up-and-coming cricketers.
The idea was simple -- matches during the day, crowds returning to the stands, songs rising into the evening air. Reality, however, had other plans.
The Mirpur stadium is known for its thunderous roar. It thrives on chants, on collective breath, on the restless pulse of packed galleries. Silence here is unsettling.
Yesterday, in a stadium built for 25,000 voices, silence became the dominant presence. Empty rows of seats waited like abandoned promises. A scattering of spectators, a few journalists, the players on the field -- that was all.
The lights were flawless, the arrangements immaculate. Yet the stadium felt hollow as meaning comes from the heart -- and the heart was still longing for the World Cup.
Into this quiet, Miles took stage. Since the 1990s, the band has slipped into the bloodstream of the city, carrying the sound of a generation across cassettes, CDs, radios and, eventually, screens. Their popularity has never needed proving. What unfolded in Mirpur, therefore, was not a rejection of Miles. It was something more unsettling -- a moment when popularity and attendance parted ways.
Haste played a major role in creating this gap. The tournament was put together at short notice. There was little time for promotion, limited scope for planning. It failed to create anticipation. Looming over everything was the lingering pain of missing the World Cup. Unable to set that aside, people could not give themselves over to another celebration.
The emptiness was not confined to a single night. The five-day tournament had begun on Thursday and on earlier evenings, the pattern had already been set. Voices that had shaped the 90s and the generations after like Warfaze, who recently became the first rock band to be nominated for the Ekushey Padak, and popular singer Mila had taken the stage. But the stands remained unchanged.
The apathy of the fans carried an unspoken message: this event cannot replace the World Cup.
For Miles, playing to such an empty gallery must have been an unusual experience. As the songs ended, applause followed -- but it did not spread. There was no surge of shared emotion, no moment of release. Only a band playing, and a stadium listening. In that image lay the harshness of the moment: sometimes, even enduring popularity leaves an artiste powerless in the face of circumstance.
Yesterday night in Mirpur was not the story of a failed concert, it was the story of a failed consolation. The BCB tried to cover up the void left by the missed World Cup with music and a domestic tournament, but the audience did not accept the offering.
The hollowness of a missed World Cup is still keenly felt by the country’s cricket lovers. And an emotion like that cannot simply be ignored and turned into a festival.
