Are those outside the Big Five accountable?

As the three players broke curfew on the night of their 200-run loss in the third ODI at East London, there was not a senior member -- usually identified as Mushfiqur Rahim, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Mahmudullah Riyad, Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan -- to be spotted in the hotel lobby. On other evenings, for instance following a practice day, these members have been seen in the lobby granting requests for selfies from expatriate Bangladeshis. But on match days and especially after a loss, they do not venture out and even if they have to get a bite to eat, they are always back well within time.

And so it has happened on the field too; over the last two years and particularly this year, there is the big five and the rest. As much as has been said about the brave new youngsters, when it comes to winning matches and being consistent the buck stops with these five players.

Now while Taskin Ahmed, Nasir Hossain and Shafiul Islam's act of breaking the curfew on the night of a humiliating series whitewash is certainly an offence, it seems to be the symptom of unthinking behaviour from those whom neither the public nor the management seem to want to hold accountable. ODI skipper Mashrafe, a magnanimous man, has recently talked about not pressurising the likes of Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Ahmed too much. Only Shakib on the tour of New Zealand had said, when asked about the seniors stepping up, that everyone needs to take responsibility and perform their own roles.

It does not take an insider to know that there is a clear divide in maturity and expectation of accountability between the five seniors and the rest. There have only been a few press conferences from Bangladesh players on the South African tour that had coherence and reflected the state of the team at the time of speaking and they came from Test skipper Mushfiqur, Mahmudullah, Shakib, ODI skipper Mashrafe and Tamim Iqbal.

While the ones from Imrul Kayes, Mominul Haque and Rubel Hossain -- all of whom have an appreciation of the environment the team are occupying -- have been unremarkable, the rest have ranged from comical and outrageous. Sabbir and Litton Das spewed empty bluster after their side was hammered from pillar to post during the first two Tests, Taskin displayed a clear lack of understanding of the ground realities, as did Nasir who after the thrashing in the one-day practice match tried to pass off the fact that they were bundled out in less than 50 overs as a positive, saying they could have scored more had they played more overs.

Mashrafe has been known to sit in his room and think about what went wrong in the match, how he could have bowled better, etc. All the seniors reflect similarly on their own performances, implement the corrections in practice and it shows on the field of play -- an example being Mushfiqur's improved showing in the ODIs. The likes of Taskin and Sabbir keep repeating the same mistakes. 

While the cases of Nasir and Shafiul are difficult as they have been in the national picture for some time, the team management and the setup must bear the brunt of the failures of the younger ones. The failure to implement and monitor a curfew is the tip of the iceberg that was exposed because of the low tide of the team's fortunes. It falls upon them and the board to address why these players have flattened out both in terms of performance and team involvement, and if the authorities say it is not because of a lack of effort on their part, then perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.