Bangladesh announced themselves at this World Cup with a comprehensive, all-round victory over South Africa . A washout and two close losses, though, mean that they now have it all to do to make the knockout stages. Any comeback will start against the West Indies on Monday, and the approaches of these two teams could not be more dissimilar.
Sport means many different things to many different people. In the West, what is meant to be an entertaining pursuit tends to veer between two extremes: a serious, methodical affair, analysed in severe and sombre tones, and a raucous booze-up. Watch a South Asian nation, however, and the celebratory, festival-like atmosphere is a spectacle unlike any other.
BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra – Test Match Special: Tri-Nation T20 Women’s Series
New Zealand v South Africa
20 June 2018
Taunton, Somerset
Sky Sports Cricket: England v South Africa 3rd One-Day International 2018
Semi-Final: England v South Africa 3rd WODI
15 June 2018
The Spitfire Ground, Canterbury
BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra – Test Match Special: 2nd Women’s One-Day International
England v South Africa
12 June 2018
Hove, Sussex
• A version of this article was originally published in The Cricket Paper on 30 March 2018. To access the original, and to subscribe to my weekly column, please click here.
BBC Radio 5 Live – Sport Bulletin: ICC Women’s World Cup 2017
England v South Africa
5 July 2017
Somerset County Ground, Taunton
A lot has been made of England’s transformation since their beleaguered 2015 World Cup campaign Down Under.
Back then, their 50-over tournament came to a fitting culmination as England scraped a win in a rain-ridden dead rubber against minnows Afghanistan. In effect, their revival started as all good English revivals do – drowning in a beer-swilled haze of good intentions.
In February this year, Hillary Clinton was odds on for a clean run to the White House, Brexit was the name of a breakfast cereal and Leicester’s claim to fame remained a long-deceased monarch buried under a few rusting Ford Fiestas.
Australia, the dominant force in global cricket for the past couple of decades, had also just reclaimed the number one Test spot. Normal service hadn’t resumed – it had hardly faltered.
Isabelle Westbury 