Tamim the fearless is watched by his uncle, Akram Khan © AFP

Even as Bangladesh were surrendering at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, Akram Khan, at 38 years and 206 days, was playing his last organised cricket match. Playing for DOHS against Sonargaon in the Dhaka Premier Division League, he led for the last time a team that could scarcely have got more interesting. There were veterans in Steve Tikolo and Khaled Mahmud. They had ultra youngsters in Tamim Iqbal and Dollar Mahmud – his name will catch your eye before his pace does, which according to locals will do too.

Akram made only three in his last game, but Tamim, his nephew, made 72 in true aggressive style, which has made him one of Bangladesh's favourite players. A past hero, who led Bangladesh to their first ODI win and led the team in the ignominious years, did not get to bat with the fearless youngster, the future of Bangladesh cricket, though.

Akram had earlier said he was in tears seeing the way Tamim batted against India in the World Cup. He couldn't have imagined batsmen of his generation play with such bravado and disrespect to reputations. "Under me, we didn't get to play much cricket," he says, "It mainly used to be Asia Cup every two years against opponents like India and Pakistan.

"We were very much afraid of them," he said as Tamim walked out to a thunderous roar at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, during the second one-dayer. "We didn't know how to play cricket, our standard was low and no good coaches would come to Bangladesh."

The bigger opponents did not respect them. Akram remembers his first match against India, in Chandigarh in December 1990. "Navjot Sidhu mocked us then, he said, 'Bring on your slow bowling, I will hit sixes.'" Sidhu did end up hitting three sixes in his unbeaten 104. As we remembered that moment, Tamim was run out, and India's mad celebrations at getting the prized wicket showed that times had changed.

"These boys are strong, they are mentally and physically much stronger, and have a good body language" Akram said. They have also played a lot of cricket against Zimbabwe and Kenya, more their standard than India or Pakistan. That, according to Akram, has helped them a lot in improving gradually.

After quitting cricket, Akram will take charge of the very same boys, in the capacity of a selector. Not a bad time for Tamim to stake his Test claim – with the future selector waiting with his pads on.

	Shakib Al Hasan, still on the rolls, is one of four stars to emerge from the BKSP © AFP

About 45 kilometres from Dhaka city centre lies 100 acres of utopia, the Bangladesh Kreeda Shiksha Protishthan (BKSP), or the Bangladesh Sports Institute. It covers most popular sports but its biggest claim to fame, which fits in neatly with the job at hand, is its grooming of cricketers. The cricket revolution here is young yet the BKSP has already given four players to the current national side: Shakib Al Hasan, still on the rolls here, Abdur Razzak, Shahadat Hossain, and Mushfiqur Rahim.

The BKSP is a place that appeals to the inner child – it is everything a sports-mad kid would have fantasised about in school, and missed out on because of the focus on studies. The whole campus has the typical smell of a playing: there's sweat, there's disappointment, and lots of unbridled joy. A swimming meet is going on, the road leading to the swimming pool and the football ground has Brazil written on it. Also going on is a training programme for Level 1 coaches; watching it even from a distance is an education in itself. And it's only 10am, and the students are only studying.

As the words kreeda [sport] and shiksha [education] in the name suggest, the institute focuses on both in equal proportion – though hopefully only on paper, as it would be a shame for such institutions (rare as they are on the subcontinent) to go on too much about studies. Instead, better to focus on the excellent facilities to play and train for cricket, football, hockey, tennis, swimming events, athletics, and basketball. The school starts from class seven with students admitted after a two-stage testing procedure: a written exam and then a test in the discipline they have chosen. The sports exam, including tests of skill, physical fitness and aptitude, is conducted by an expert. For example, if the candidate is a bowler, he may be tested by Dipu Roy Chowdhury, a former bowler and 'A' team coach and now a certified coaches' educator.

The cricket facility works in tandem with the National Cricket Academy (NCA), which is yet to completely move in to the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur. The U-19 teams also come and train here. The training facilities are open to all Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) teams. The regular students get the services of specialist batting, bowling, and fielding coaches.

A typical day here starts at 5:30am. After a two-hour assembly and physical training session, the students go back to the hostel, shower, have breakfast, and go to their classes. The training for the games happens in the evenings. The best part here is a student has to pay only 3,500 Takas every three months, a pittance compared to what former players, not qualified as coaches, charge at their academies in Indian metros.

Eddie Barlow, the former Bangladesh coach, was particularly fond of this place. "He used to tell us he would be here only for so much time, we needed to develop coaches," Chowdhary says. "All this development has happened so rapidly because we were under pressure, because we were being criticised after being given Test status. It was up to us to develop and prove them wrong." They now have 150 homegrown Level 1 coaches now, and foreign coaches looking forward to take charge of the national side too.

After Barlow's death, Cally, his widow, had expressed a desire to have his ashes spread over the BKSP, he loved the place so much. From the evidence at hand, it’s a sentiment fully justified.

	Shahadat Hossain, better known as 'Rajib', has other talents too © TigerCricket.com

More than half the tour is over, and we are yet to have a full day's play. In fact, only once have we started on time. It's frustrating for everyone: the fans of course; the groundsmen who have waited for 14 months and prepared tirelessly to stage a Test match; the journalists, too, who struggle to find something to write about; the umpires who everyone keeps calling on for updates; the TV commentators whose job is to keep the viewers hooked, sounding falsely optimistic in their updates; the text commentators who do not have the luxury of archival footage to fill in the void.

It's equally frustrating for the players once they leave the hotel and have to wait for 2-3 hours in the dressing room. How do they pass time; how do those restless souls stay at peace with themselves and the weather? Not everyone, after all, is a Chris Read to go on Sky TV and tell people, "What's in my bag" [Read used to do this feature with Sky during rain intervals]. Not everyone is a Makhaya Ntini either, who can come out and start doing bhangra at Chepauk [his sense of geography gone awfully wrong there] or play with the resident dog there.

The Bangladesh side here are a jolly lot who may only have a problem if the wait is longer than two hours. A two-hour break is just another opportunity for their bowlers to be looked after by the physiotherapist and their batsmen to, yes, sleep. Mashrafe Mortaza, an allrounder in his own right, takes the role of a batsman there. He can fall off to sleep anywhere, anytime, in any posture. With his snoring, Mortaza provides other players with some much-needed fun.

Javed Omar is another heavy sleeper. "I just sit down and go to sleep," Omar says. Habibul Bashar, the captain, can't put himself to sleep in the afternoon, breaking the proud Bengali tradition. "I try my best to wake the others up," he says, "I trouble Mortaza for his snoring; I take their pictures to remind them who is the laziest. Basically, we are after everybody's case."

Mohammad Rafique, the senior statesman, enjoys the fun and frolic of the youngsters. "Rajib is a good singer," says Rafique, "I enjoy his singing." Wait a minute, Rajib? "The fast bowler." Who Rajib? Rafique takes about 30 seconds to dig up the good name of the "fast bowler". "Shahadat Hossain."

What did they do yesterday and today? "Similar stuff and, of course, sleep," was the unanimous reply. Not for nothing did Huen Tsang describe Chittagong as "sleeping beauty emerging from mists and water".

	Local boy Tamim Iqbal finally gets to play on his home ground © AFP

'Chitang', as pronounced by Bangladeshis, is the land of Aftab Ahmed and Tamim Iqbal. There is something about the air of Chittagong, something that makes people aggressive at sport and laid-back in general. Being a coastal city probably explains the usual carefree attitude. Dhaka is slow because it is busy; Chittagong is slow because it won't have it any other way. The weather is as unpredictable as the batsmen; the scorching heat last evening turned into heavy rain in the middle of the night. It rained so heavily as to delay the practice this morning. The weather promises to be the same over the upcoming ODI and first Test match. Buying dollars seems to be a local pastime. One can find peddlers on the busy streets, whispering to anyone who as much as smells non-Bangladeshi, "Dollar, dollar, exchange." Shipwrecking is a big industry here – people dismantle the useless ships and sell their various parts.

Chittagong also houses a considerable number of foreigners. There are Indians, there are Pakistani businessmen who did not move after the partition. There are ''Hindu" restaurants too. Tamim's parents are originally from Bihar. The parents of Akram Khan, former captain and Tamim's uncle, were born in Uttar Pradesh.

The Chittagonians are proud people. The locals speak about how they resisted the strong Pakistani forces at the Chittagong Port in 1971. General Ziaur Rahman, the rebel commander, who would go on to become their President, led the mutiny against the Pakistani forces.

The new cricket stadium in Chittagong is named after a martyr, Shahid Ruhul Amin. It is situated about half an hour from the city center. The previous match held at this ground will be remembered for Jason Gillespie's unbeaten 201, the highest ever score made by a night watchman. The match also had its share of controversy when a few journalists were beaten up by the police. As one looks at the calm Bay of Bengal from the top tier of the stadium – the various storms well disguised, one will be lying if caution is not the word on the mind.

	DVDs galore in the Dhaka markets © Getty Images

Pink Floyd's Pulse concert costs 70 Takas (about US$ 1, or INR 45). The CDs of Black, one of Bangladesh's most famous rock bands (Bangladeshi rock is a big thing; one band has performed in Bollywood movies too), costs 50 Takas each.

And there's scope for bargaining. Rare Bollywood and Hollywood movies and rarer concerts can be bought for around a dollar each. Software programmes are even cheaper. Welcome to the streets and malls of Dhaka, the haven for pirated CDs and DVDs.

So widespread is the piracy that it’s almost as if there’s no other option. It's not even an underground market; pirated CDs can be bought in the most popular shopping complexes. People in India too know this and start sending DVD lists even before one gets a visa. The locals commonly boast they can watch Bollywood movies even before they are released in India.

The Copyright Act in Bangladesh labels anything used to reproduce a musical work for commercial use as piracy. This left the reproduction for personal use open for practice. Piracy through MP3s is prevalent in other countries too. But Bangladesh suffers more from the other infringement, one where an artiste’s work is copied and passed off as an original creation. In an article, "Cheating the musicians", the Daily Star says nobody bothers to stop the piracy of the second kind.

Earlier this year, a body called Movement Against Piracy (MAP) was formed, one which took the initiative to go to retailers and train them on how to tell between original and pirated CDs. Turns out they know the difference pretty well. But because of the initiatives taken, some of the CDs are now priced accordingly: Beatles in Japan go out for 70 Takas 70, Arctell in Dhaka costs Takas 390. The DVDs of the second kind find about 5% of space in stores. But people are conveniently given other options: to buy the pirated ones for 50-70 Takas.

The foreign artists may not feel the pinch, but it's the local musicians who are suffering the most. The Daily Star quotes Fahmida Nabi, a singer, saying that she has never seen a proper legal contract being entered into by an artiste and a music company. According to her, if there are proper contracts and proper royalty is paid to the singer, there will be efforts made by the music companies too to stop piracy.

Entertainment business still is not totally accepted in Bangladeshi society, and the common attitude is to not to think of it as Intellectual Property. It could be a long time before Bangladesh stops cheating its musicians, but what one can do – from a personal point of view – is grab all the Floyd concerts and stick to original CDs when it comes to Bangladeshi artistes.

	'He was always optimistic about our cricket and believed it would take off' © Bill McLeod

February 20, 1998. Mohammad Aminul Islam, the former Bangladesh captain, remembers the day clearly. "I had got him out that day, but I didn't know it would be his last innings." Raman Lamba fielded later in the day - without a helmet - at forward short-leg and Mehrab Hossain hit him straight in the temple. The hit was so hard, the ball rebounded to Khaled Mashud, the wicketkeeper. "I was the new man in and asked Raman if he was okay. He said, 'Bulli [Islam's nickname is Bulbul] main to mar gaya' [I am dead, Bulli]. He was shaking." Mehrab was so shaken by the accident he doesn't even like to talk about it, the local journalists warn.

Lamba had got up after the blow and had made his way back to the dressing room unassisted, his last walk off a cricket field.

Bangladesh was nowhere on the cricket map then. Yet club cricket there had attracted some of the big names. The fateful game was played between Lamba's club Abahani and Mohammedan, a rivalry that Bangladesh sports journalists equate to the one between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. Lamba always believed Bangladesh would make it big someday. "Bangladesh was his second home. He was always optimistic about our cricket and believed it would take off," Islam said. "He was one of our idols."

There are no official statistics for Lamba in Bangladesh. But he was a synonym for half-centuries and centuries there, pulling big crowds with his big-hitting. "He was very dear to us, and remains one of our best cricket friends. He did a lot for Bangladesh cricket. I wrote a column in a newspaper, on some memorable moments spent with Raman. And when I sat down to write it, I cried.

"Bangladesh loved Lamba, a stand in his name at the Bangabandhu Stadium was promised. But they don't even play cricket there now."

Bangladesh have made big leaps in international cricket now, and Islam added, "Had Raman been alive, he would have been proud to see how far Bangladesh cricket has come".