From ‘Retired Out’ to ‘Timed Out’ - Anatomy of cricket's weirdest rivalry

If you go by just plain numbers, it will be impossible to understand why there is so much fuss over the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka rivalry. Despite their recent decline, Sri Lanka still have an overwhelming edge, winning three-fourth of their matches against Bangladesh. 

Sri Lanka has been a great friend to Bangladesh if we talk about cricket. A lot of Sri Lankans have been directly involved in the rise of the game in the country. 

Apart from the current head coach Chandika Hathurusingha, many other Sri Lankans have been part of Bangladesh's backroom staff. Mario Villavarayan, Champaka Ramanayake, Ruwan Kalpage, Rangana Herath, Thilan Samaraweera, Naveed Nawaz, Hashan Tillakaratne - the list is very long. 

There was a time when Bangladesh used to literally get bullied by Sri Lanka in international cricket. Who can forget how Marvan Atapattu and Mahela Jayawardene voluntarily walked off in a Test match to allow their teammates to feast on an inept Bangladesh bowling line-up? 

They were the first set of batters to be "retired out" in the history of Test cricket. From "retired out" to "timed out", the Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka contest has seen many flashpoints and grown into perhaps cricket's weirdest rivalry.

While probably the greatest catalyst to the rivalry is plying his trade in a low-key Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are going head to head in a quite fiercely competitive ODI series in Chattogram. Who would have thought Nazmul Islam Apu's playful act to scare his franchise captain Darren Sammy would give rise to such a serious thing?

In the 2016 Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), Apu played under Sammy at Rajshahi Kings. The left-arm spinner one day pulled off a snake dance-like act - the naagin dance - and Sammy pretended to get scared and was amused. Apu brought out that celebration in a BPL game and since then it became his trademark way of celebrating wickets. 

Two years later, he made his T20I debut against Sri Lanka and dismissed Danushka Gunathilaka to get his first international wicket. And quite naturally, he brought out the naagin dance and one who knew Apu could deduce that his intention was never to mock Gunathilaka or Sri Lanka. 

Gunathilaka was prompt to give it back to the opponents. In the very next game, he picked Bangladesh's last wicket and showed the naagin celebration to the non-striker who happened to be none other than Apu.

But Gunathilaka's celebration did not go down well with one man sitting in the Bangladesh dressing room. 

Mushfiqur Rahim played a masterful knock of 72* off 35 in a record run-chase for Bangladesh in the Nidahas Trophy a few months later and after hitting the winning run, the wicketkeeper-batter pulled out the naagin dance. It was a high-stakes game and probably Mushfiqur's angry celebration was the turning point in the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka rivalry. 

Days later, the two sides met again in a virtual semifinal and the cricketing world saw one of the most dramatic finishes in a T20 game. Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan at one point decided to call his team back (inspired by Arjuna Ranatunga, maybe) after a controversial non-no ball call, only to be calmed down by interim coach Khaled Mahmud. 

Moments later, Mahmudullah hit the winning six and the whole Bangladesh squad, including Mahmud who was in his mid-40s, broke into a crazy naagin dance. Players of both teams were involved in heated arguments and damages were made in the Bangladesh dressing room while celebrating. 

Since then, encounters between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have never been normal. Litton Das and Lahiru Kumara were fined after an ugly face-off in the 2021 T20 World Cup. 

Before a crucial 2022 Asia Cup encounter, the then Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka said Bangladesh were "an easier opponent" compared to Afghanistan as they did not have world-class bowlers barring Shakib and Mustafizur Rahman. 

This angered Mahmud, Bangladesh's team director for the tournament, who responded to Shanaka, saying Sri Lanka did not have any world-class bowler at all. Jayawardene joined the bandwagon and wrote on X, formerly Twitter, wrote, "Looks like it's time for Sri Lanka bowlers to show the class and batters to show who they are on the field."

In the end, it was Sri Lanka who landed the knockout punch and Chamika Karunaratne, their hitman when it comes to celebrations, brought out the naagin celebration in the dugout. 

A year later, "Timed out" became the new naagin. Angelo Mathews became the first batter in the history of international cricket to be adjudged timed out during a 2023 World Cup match after the veteran batter took too much time to take guard due to helmet malfunction. 

Shakib, Bangladesh's captain for that tournament, had the option to withdraw the appeal but decided against it. In the second half of the match, Mathews, of all players, got Shakib out (no, it's not cinema) and pointed to an imaginary wristwatch which would later become a go-to celebration in Bangladesh-Sri Lanka games, just like that naagin dance.

Mathews, at the post-match press conference, went on to say that he had lost all the respect for Shakib and only Bangladesh could have done such a thing. 

The incident was a game-changer with the ICC now deciding to mandate the use of stop-clock in white-ball international matches. 

After that eventful World Cup game, Sri Lanka faced Bangladesh for the first time in a T20I series earlier this month in Sylhet and just minutes into the first match, Shoriful Islam dismissed Avishka Fernando and brought out the timed out celebration. 

The crowd at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium chanted Shakib's name to rile Mathews up and the Sri Lanka all-rounder did the needful. He showed them the timed out celebration. 

After Sri Lanka's T20I series win, all the visiting players taunted the hosts with a timed out celebration which drew a reaction from the Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto, the man who told Shakib to appeal for that dismissal in that World Cup game. 

"I think they are yet to move on from that dismissal," Shanto told reporters after the series was over, which prompted Sri Lanka assistant coach Nawaz to say they were over it.

It wasn't the only time shots were fired from both sides during the series. Hathurusingha, who was at loggerheads with Mathews during his tenure as Sri Lanka head coach, played down the return of Wanindu Hasaranga before the T20I series decider. "He is just another player for us," Hathurusingha said. After the series win, Hasaranga gave a reply, saying, "This is just another series win for us."

Confrontations between players have become very common in Bangladesh-Sri Lanka games. Tanzim Hasan Sakib vs Kusal Mendis during the 2023 World Cup, Towhid Hridoy vs Nuwan Thushara and others during the second T20I last week, Shoriful vs Dunith Wellalage on Friday - the list goes on.

But is the rivalry as intense off the field as it is on it? Interestingly, just months after Mathews "lost all the respect for Shakib", the two were seen together alongside Shahid Afridi and actor Sonu Sood in an ad shoot. Hridoy received a lot of love during his stint in the Lanka Premier League (LPL) and is good friends with Wellalage. 

Rivalries cannot get weirder and stranger than this and cricket fans outside the Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan bubble will continue to have trouble wrapping their head around how it became so serious.