The 101-run win over hosts West Indies in the second and final Test in Jamaica on Tuesday was the fitting way for Bangladesh to close out the 2023-2025 World Test Championship (WTC) cycle -- the best one the Tigers experienced to date. 

And, while there have been sporadic flashes of brilliance coming from batters, bowlers or fielders, the one department that often set the tone in most of the recent wins in the longest format is the Tigers' pace unit. 

The convincing victory not only saw Bangladesh, led by stand-in captain Mehedi Hasan Miraz in the absence of injured regular skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto, bounce back to draw the two-match series -- after having suffered a 201-run hammering in the first Test in Antigua last week -- but also marked the Tigers' first win in the Caribbean in 15 years.

It was also the third away Test win for Bangladesh this year, after sweeping hosts Pakistan clean in a two-match series in August, and the first time that they managed to win a total of four Tests in a single WTC cycle. 

In fact, in the previous two WTC cycles, Bangladesh managed to win just a solitary game -- a historic victory against New Zealand at Mount Maunganui in the second cycle (2021-2023) after going winless in their first WTC foray between 2019-2021.  

Winning a Test requires a team to possess the ability to scalp the opposition's 20 wickets -- a reality that haunted the Tigers for a long time. However, with the core group of quicks, including Taskin Ahmed, Hasan Mahmud, Shoriful Islam, and Nahid Rana -- the latest to make his way in the pace unit and the most exciting of all -- now making their presence felt in almost every other matches, Bangladesh finally seem to have cracked the code of bundling the opposition out twice in a Test.

Left-arm spinner Taijul Islam got his 15th Test fifer, and fourth overseas, to entangle the Windies in a spin web on the fourth day of the second Test at the Sabina Park, but the match was turned on its head on Day 3 when Nahid terrorised the Windies batters with deliveries that clocked around and even over the 150kph-mark. 

From 85 for one to getting bundled out for just 146, still 18 runs away from the Tigers' low 164-run first-innings total, West Indies batters were left bamboozled, bruised, and shocked by what Nahid offered during a spell of fierce fast-bowling. He ended up with his maiden Test fifer in the first innings, and that seemed to have sparked a belief in the troops to go in the ascendancy from there on. 

In the second innings, Jaker Ali's relentless career-best 91 off 106 deliveries, Miraz and opener Shadman Islam's sudden attack on the Windies bowlers to Taijul wrapping things up on Day 4 -- the foundation for all of it were laid by Nahid had done in the previous innings. 

The pacers even played a crucial role on the fourth day as well, with Taskin reaping the benefits of bowling in tandem with Nahid as he removed Keacy Carty and Justin Greaves to give Tigers crucial breakthroughs in between spinners weaving their web.

The Test series win in Pakistan saw pacers take a total of 21 wickets in two matches and even the famous win over the BlackCaps in Mount Maunganui in 2021 was on the back of a brilliant spell by Ebadot Hossain, another quick who would now find it hard to make his way into the eleven after a lengthy lay off due to injury.  

From a time when Bangladesh had to rely mostly on spinners making most of the pitches tailored to suit them to the Tigers knowing that now they have what it takes to overpower opponents even in their own backyards -- this particular WTC cycle will definitely work as a confidence booster for even better Test outings in the coming years.