Greenidge's caution still echoes

"There is no way that Bangladesh cricket, with the present system, can operate at the Test match level in less than 10 years. I give you that and I stand the challenge on that. To push forward will be suicidal as far as our cricket is concerned."

West Indies legend and Bangladesh's former director of coaching, Gordon Greenidge, had said this in an interview published in The Daily Star on July 25, 1998.

Fresh off the ICC Trophy triumph in the previous year, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) was then pushing for Test status, a move Greenidge was clearly against.

The BCB didn't heed to Greenidge's warning as 23 months after that interview, on June 26, 2000, Bangladesh became the 10th Test-playing nation in the world and the West Indian was back in Barbados, trying to implement the school cricket structure he had originally envisioned for Bangladesh.

A quarter of a century has passed since then, the euphoria of joining the big boys of cricket has subsided long ago, and has been replaced by memories of being the whipping boys in Tests for years.

Prior to all the ignominious defeats, attaining Test status was celebrated like a national achievement in Bangladesh. For a country starved for success and any positive global recognition, being granted as a full member of the ICC was a matter of national pride.

The sequence of milestones in Bangladesh cricket -- winning the ICC Trophy in 1997, attaining ODI status the same year and then beating Scotland and Pakistan in the ICC ODI World Cup in 1999 -- makes achieving Test status in 2000 as the next natural step, but that was hardly the case.

Winning an ICC Trophy does not necessarily catapult teams to Test status. The UAE (1994), Canada (2001) and Scotland (2005), won it once each but are still stuck in the backwaters.

Making a splash in World Cup also doesn't warrant a Test status as Kenya reached the semifinal in 2003 edition but have now almost faded away.

Even having a passionate fan base is not enough, case in point, Nepal, who, despite having legions of fans, are still some distance away from attaining Test status.

In Bangladesh's case, the stars had aligned perfectly: the BCB struck the iron while it was hot and had a few allies by their side to earn the full membership.

Getting to play Tests is just one of the many perks that comes with becoming a full member. The financial boost, from the ICC and local sponsors, that followed transformed BCB, which used to beg, borrow and steal, figuratively, to function, into the richest sporting body in the country.

But while cricket in Bangladesh has grown exponentially in scale, the Tigers are still miles behind the top sides in Tests as even 25 years after becoming a full member, Bangladesh has failed to develop a culture of first-class cricket.

As Bangladesh's maiden first-class competition, the National Cricket League (NCL), had begun in the 1999-2000 season, cricketers were only getting a taste of playing in three-day, four-day games before they were flung in the five-day format, pitted against countries that had been playing the format for decades.

This is exactly why Greenidge wanted at least a decade to prepare the cricketers for the struggles of Test cricket. But he never got that opportunity.

From BCB's point of view, however, had Bangladesh waited for its players to get ready, the window of opportunity to gain full membership could have passed them by, and that was a chance they could not take.

The perks that have come with the full membership have indeed turned cricket into Bangladesh's biggest sport, but failure to create a first-class culture has turned Bangladesh into the perpetual adolescent in the world of cricket, a cricket nation that refuses to grow up.