Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh - 8 ideas for your business!

How is your business gearing up for the greatest cricketing event of the world when it kicks off in Dhaka on February 17^th? As the cricket lovers from all around the world will either get glued to their TVs, computers and phones to get latest updates from the grounds of the sub-continent and while many of them will arrive in person to root for their favourite teams – how as a Bangladeshi business, you are preparing yourself not only to cash in on the opportunity but also to play some role whatsoever in upholding the local norms, cultures and traditions to the world media, to visitors in Bangladesh and to viewers abroad?

Might be a good idea to steer clear of the controversies and chaos ahead of the big event next month. Already quite a lot of chaos has been reported in relation to clashes for tickets, regarding the event managers of the opening ceremony and their involving Indian celebrities and the more serious concerns about adequate accommodation facilities for the foreign visitors. We can’t talk about all these in this post and neither we are in any position to provide solutions for them. Rather lets stay focused on opportunities. Not in any particular order or preference, some thoughts are as following –

1. Reengineer, rename and revamp your menu

If you are in the business of food, takeaways, fast-food or restaurants, how about renaming some key popular dishes in your menu according to the cricketing themes, teams or even players? We already have seen our love for opponent-named dish items when we had beaten Australia and New Zealand in form of kangaroo curry and kiwi bhorta special! So be innovative and go ahead rename your cocktails as ‘Captain Courageous-Shakib Special’, burgers as ‘Tornado Tamim’ or spicy items as ‘Mashrafee Masala’. Possibilities are endless.

2. Eat, sip and cheer

Again this goes out to those in food businesses, make sure you have TV screens, large and small, installed and supported by UPS to show matches as they are being played. Quite a great opportunity to lock in your customers to enjoy the match in your restaurants with specially discounted food prices for the duration of the match may be, or for an innings only or even for the first fifteen overs only!

3. A win for Bangladesh, a win for the food-lovers, shoppers and mobile users

Don’t wait for the politicians and governments to flood our players with accolades and awards incase we steal some thunder during this world cup, you can do it yourself from your business perspective, you can do it early on and by rewarding not the players but their numerous supporters and fan from around the country. Announce early on through your websites, social media pages, or put up a banner and print in your menus that you will offer free meals or free drinks all throughout the following day of a historic home win! This might be your gesture to show gratitude to Tamims and Shakibs incase they bring some much needed glory for the nation form the cricket war fields.

In the same tune, if you are a retailer, the world cup offers you a great external hook to offer discounts for a day, week or based on a match by match basis to your customers. Its just a matter of how you show your brand to be completely drenched in the world cup rain and how passionately you want to share this spirit with your customers.

Finally, the mobile phone companies can always offer their subscribers free minutes or free SMSes incase Bangladesh wins, so that the good news can be shared faster and wider among friends and families at home and abroad.

4. Freebies with every wicket, freebies with every six

Again this idea might work on a match by match basis and can be limited to the day of the match only. You can announce beforehand that every time Bangladesh is playing a match, every time an opponent wicket falls or everytime a Bangladeshi batsman scores a six, you offer a free coke to all who are present in your restaurant at that moment.

5. The glorious cricketing moments in DVD

We’ve talked about this before in an earlier post. No occasion will be as great as this to finally showcase in the form of a DVD/CD the historic winning moments of Bangladeshi cricket and make them available for purchase or as prize items competitions in your points of sales, business premises.

6. Patriotic marketing and patriotism merchandising

A great occasion yet again to print out t-shirts, mugs, key-rings, wrist-bands, stickers, photoframes etc. with the Bengal tigers on it. Even better that if you are a charity or as part of your corporate generosity towards the development of the sport in Bangladesh, you can decide to donate either the full or a certain percentage of sales to skills searching, developing initiatives for Bangladesh cricket.

7. Tourism and sightseeing – if a festival doesn’t exist – invent it and have fun!

There is no doubt that travel agencies and the tourism board of Bangladesh are gearing up to woo the foreign sports tourists to various scenic locations of Bangladesh. Many among this group might actually arrive in the sub-continent with a view to not only enjoy great games of cricket but also to make a touristic discovery of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the same breathe, which is certainly a good idea. It might not be the best idea to compare tourist attractions of Bangladesh with other countries as we have what we have and we can change things overnights, merely can try to improve them over time. Something we can certainly do is to innovate rituals or activities at or surrounding our tourist locations and relate them to cricket in such a way that even after the world cup finishes, we can continue with the trend and festivities years after years.

For example, how about a beach cricket tournament in Cox’s Bazar? The format of the game, rules, prizes etc. might require a whole different post but the key idea here is to innovate something unique which doesn’t exist as a tourist attraction related to cricket anywhere in the world- or certainly not in the Indian sub-continent. We have the longest unbroken sea beach in the whole world stretching 120 kilometres. A fun to watch 20-20 cricket match at every 5 kilometer of the stretch over a period of 2-3 days might draw enough participants and tourists alike to visit each location for the fun of it, and thus discover the unique beauties of the coastal Bangladesh in a different sporting way.

8. The cricket bat of best wishes

Although a bit late for this may or I am not entirely aware if anything similar have already taken place- but it would be nice if a massive cricket bat could have travelled to all district towns of Bangladesh where the fans could have signed in their support for the home team. If travelling to each corner of the country sounds improbable within a month then atleast visiting the divisional headquarters would be nice. In the end of the day, the world cup in Bangladesh will be more about the fans and lovers of cricket than about the players themselves. So the common public have every right to be a part of this festivity from outside the stadiums too.

So just some random thoughts here, let me know how you are preparing for the fun with the bat and ball next month.

Bangladesh seals historic win against England - now what?

Now that we have finally secured wins against all leading cricketing nations, its worth thinking if there are any opportunities to seal this occasion with items to promote and preserve before we plunge into yet another long gap before we taste the winning wines in future. Even at the time of this writing, England, the only country left to be beaten by the cricketing minnows (that is us), has already secured the Natwest Series with a resounding 144 win over the audacious Bangladeshi Tigers. No wonder the three lions were really embarrassed and waken up by the 5 run victory by Bangladesh in Bristol on 10 July.

This might be an opportunity for those who sponsor the Bangladesh cricket team to come up with say a DVD of all major matches which we consider as the milestones in the cricket history of Bangladesh. We can include brief interviews of players on their reactions and aspirations on how they felt when they won and how they want to keep winning in near future in all major cricket tournaments. Such a DVD may be a considered as something to keep for collection for numerous cricket lovers in Bangladesh as our team is yet to convert winning against major opponents a regular phenomenon. So as we wait for who knows 20 more matches before we seal a victory in the cricket pitch, we can package our short-lived ecstasies of winning and preserve it for long rainy days ahead. Also, such materials can be used to inspire nevertheless the future cricket enthusiasts and new talents that on our day, when all our batting, bowling and fielding departments click together, no force can stop us to win and we really can win, whoever the opponent is. After all, cricket - to a great extent, is a mind game, other than being a game played only by a bat and a ball. And the greatest player in the cricket pitch is your mind, which is your strength and control over your temperament is the final and most important skill required along with techniques to spot the odd balls and hit a cover drive for four.


We hope to see the day when winning becomes regular and natural to us, and other than celebrating irregular fireworks against other teams, we can start aiming for winning a series or a major tournament trophy. As Jamie Siddons continues to do his best, we can always relish our great matches when we rose to the occasion and made the red and green wave with pride. Lets get the winning Tigers DVD and watch it again and again until it becomes obsolete and irrelevant, when these wins will not be called 'historic' anymore and become day to day events.

What else they could have done?

I am writing this article while Bangladesh Cricket Team is playing their first ever Twenty20 Cricket World Cup (2007) in South Africa. They played their first match against West Indies, and they have won that. But the following matches left only sorrows with no achievements. Now the question comes- what else they could have done?

From the very beginning of Bangladeshi Cricket we have not been persistent in whichever way you look at us. We win one game, and then we lose in another. I have talked with a lot of cricket loving folks who have been continuously complaining about the performance of our cricket team. Yeah, we have won in some matches, along with beating the stronger teams in the World Cups, and different other tournaments. But if you take a keen look you will certainly discover that none of our victory came in a row or at a stretch. You will come across several gaps between two or more victories. Moreover, you may find some lucky incidents taking place during the games causing victory to the Bangladeshi Tigers. Though it doesn’t mean that our players cannot play well nor it means that we don’t have a good coach to train them up. It’s something else hindering our importunate victories.

We need to be accurate and persistent. We need to make more detailed plans and execute them as required. Obviously a question arises- How? An answer could be playing a lot of domestic crickets. You may raise another question- Aren’t we playing a lot? The answer is no. We are not playing enough to make our players’ performance world class. So we need to play a lot. We are to arrange a lot of tournaments. Now, in order to arrange a lot of tournaments we need huge finance. We want the finance come from the corporate giants operating in Bangladesh.

Ours is a poor country. Our government remains so busy in other activities that it often gets impossible for them to concentrate on cricket. Though I must admit our government has patronized cricket for years over different other games. Still we need a handful corporate sponsors who can give us what our cricket really needs. We have already seen some corporate giant participating in the betterment of our cricket, but we need more. We have to arrange a lot of twenty20, 1st class tournaments from where we may find our stars.

In our country huge amount of money is expensed in different advertising campaigns. If the MNCs, together with domestic sponsors patronized cricket more we could find the team Bangladesh has always been looking for.

There are many poor cricketers roaming here and there in our country. They cannot even find a chance to show what qualities they have in them. We are to find and train them hard so that the next tournament Bangladesh participates ends with some consistent victories.