The Missing Seasons: Is Bangladesh Hockey Really a Victim of Cricket, or Its Own Inertia?

In 2026, there was no match of the National Hockey League on the fields of Dhaka. 2026, 2026—for three consecutive years, no competitive match took place in Bangladesh's domestic hockey. Yet during this time, I was hand-drawing shot maps of 64 matches in my notebook—matches that perhaps never took place, or did take place but no one watched.

When I landed in Dhaka from the Netherlands in 2026, I was 21. In Europe, hockey meant turf in every town, regular league matches every week, and an unbroken pipeline from age eight to the senior national team. Arriving in Dhaka, I saw that in a country of 170 million people, there is only one international-standard turf—the Maulana Bhasani National Hockey Stadium. This contrast has troubled me from the start—why?

I don't give the easy answer. Because I know the easy answer isn't always true. Bangladesh's hockey lovers say cricket took everything. Money, TV, screens—all dominated by cricket. But every page of my notebook says something different. My collected data shows that the structural problems of Bangladesh hockey began before cricket's rise. The Premier Division Hockey League was first launched in 2026. After 27 years, that league has been held only 13 times. That means, on average, once every two years. It was already irregular before the satellite TV era began.

In 2026, I became aware that the Bangladesh Hockey Federation has been a member of the FIH since 2026. Yet over this long period, the federation has never measured its own product. No shot maps, no longitudinal records, no reliable season-to-season comparison. Since my student days, this empty space pained me. So I started writing it down by hand myself.

In 2026, during the coronavirus pandemic, stadiums were closed. Sitting at home, I started building a spreadsheet of the Dhaka Premier Division Hockey League. It revealed—only 13 editions since 2026. Not a single match took place in 2026 and 2026. Before writing this information in any column, I learned R and public event-data tools. I sent a piece with that chart to a Dhaka daily's sports desk. This was the first Bangladeshi hockey piece that presented a dataset instead of nostalgia. My hand-drawn chart was printed beside the paper.

The main objective of this article is to highlight that alongside cricket, the federation's long-standing negligence is largely responsible for the decline of Bangladesh hockey. If the national olympic committee and hockey federation had maintained a fixed calendar since 2026, domestic hockey would not have lost its foundation even with the dominance of satellite TV.

The question I always ask is: making decisions without data is like shooting arrows in the dark. Talking to several officials of the Bangladesh Hockey Federation, I learned that between 2026 and 2026, the federation's annual general meeting was not held. No draft of the Elite League was created. Yet during this very period, the country won the Junior AHF Cup Championship (2026, 2026), and in December 2026 qualified for the Junior World Cup for the first time. The question arises: if the age-group teams play so well, why doesn't this continuity exist at the senior level?

I found the answer in 2026. Two days after qualifying for the Junior World Cup, I listed the 18 players of the 2026 Junior AHF Cup-winning squad. Ten years later, how many of that squad are still active? Only five. The rest have gone into studies, jobs, or abroad. None of these five have had the opportunity to play regularly in the domestic league, because that league itself is irregular. This is part of the '21 Club' concept I created—the careers of Bangladeshi hockey players effectively end between the ages of 21 and 25.

The pipeline doesn't leak, the pipeline ends. There is no shortage of talent in Bangladesh hockey—the Junior AHF Cup hat-trick and 2026 Junior World Cup qualification are proof. The problem is the next step after training and talent development is uncertain. When a player turns 21, they must decide—join a services team, take a bank job, or stay in a club where no competitive match has been held for two years.

I note this moment of decision. Whose names are lost? Who survives? These numbers are not statistics—they are human lives.

The Bangladesh Hockey Federation had a plan in the 1990s—turf would be installed in every district. How many have been installed until 2026? Only one. Apart from the National Hockey Stadium, there is no international-standard turf anywhere in Bangladesh. At the same time, Punjab and Odisha in India have about 25 turfs. The purpose of this comparison is not to belittle any country. Rather, to understand—what our organizational problems are, and how deep they run.

In the Netherlands, a hockey match cannot be postponed; in Bangladesh, from 2026 to 2026, there was no Premier League. But the national team played in the Asian Champions Trophy. The meaning of this paradox is—players survive at the top level, but the foundation has collapsed.

I talk to hockey lovers. They say, 'Cricket took our boys.' I say, cricket only took money and TV. Our hockey was already weak in administration, infrastructure, and planning before cricket's rise. The hockey team that created the possibility of beating Pakistan in the 2026 Asia Cup was not institutionally memorialized after being dropped from the international league in the 1990s.

When I talk to former officials of the Bangladesh Hockey Federation, I learn that no permanent committee was formed to hold the league every year after 2026. The decision to organize or cancel a tournament comes down to the will of the federation's general secretary and president. This kind of decision-making process is extremely weak for an organization. If there had been a fixed schedule every year, hockey could have retained its audience even after the spread of satellite TV.

Of the 64 matches recorded in my notebook, I watched 32 in the stadium. Over three different seasons, I noted shots-on-target, circle entries, and penalty corner employment by hand. With this data, I can prove one thing—in seasons 2026-18 and 2026-19, the number of national team players did not decrease, but the number of domestic matches dropped to one-third.

What happens when domestic matches decrease? Young players lose the opportunity to test themselves in a competitive environment. Most of those who played in the 2026 Junior World Cup squad are 19 to 20 years old. If regular matches are not held in the domestic league in the next two years, the transition of this talented group to the senior level will be hindered.

Long-term planning is required to qualify for the World Cup and Olympics in international hockey. Bangladesh has not yet qualified to play hockey at the Olympics. The situation of women's hockey is even worse—for my report 'Waking up after decades of hibernation' published in The Daily Star in 2026, I investigated for five months. The women's hockey league has been held only three times since 2026.

But despite all this, I am not pessimistic. The qualification of the junior hockey team for the World Cup in December 2026 proves that the young generation is interested in hockey, and they have skill. But to sustain this achievement, administrative reform is necessary. I don't want to write specific recommendations, because the federation has been planning for 50 years and they haven't worked. Rather, I will say: if a permanent domestic calendar is not established by 2026, then even if Bangladesh does well in the next Junior World Cup, the sport will have no institutional existence within the country.

I show a page of my notebook: on October 14, 2026, at a friendly match held at Maulana Bhasani Hockey Stadium, the attendance was 37. In that match, a goal was scored from a penalty corner, which I drew by hand. 37 spectators—at a national stadium. I then understood, the problem is not just cricket. The problem is—we have stopped watching our own game.

"Sixty-four matches, one notebook, and nobody to show it to."

When I sit down to write, the first number I bring is the statistics of the recent match. In the last five years, the Bangladesh national hockey team has scored an average of 2.4 goals per match in international matches and conceded 3.1. But the data of the domestic league is even more disturbing—in the four editions held from 2026 to 2026, the total number of matches was 52. That is, an average of 8.6 matches per year. At the same time, in the Indian Hockey League, 30+ matches have been held every year.

In Bangladesh, the question is asked, why did cricket move ahead? But no one asks, why couldn't hockey manage its own house? The data in my hands says that in the early 1990s, before satellite TV began, hockey was the country's second most popular sport. But since 2026, the continuity of the domestic league has been lost. After I arrived in Dhaka in 2026, the first thing I noticed was—there is no discussion about hockey in Dhaka.

I once worked on the HCT Bangladesh (2026) draft board, in the country's first franchise hockey league. There I built a pre-draft board. I identified a 19-year-old player who passed from BKSP for selection in the fifth round. He had no league minutes, but had the highest circle-entry rate in the junior pool. In the end, a franchise took him, and he scored 4 goals in 5 matches.

Look, the talent is there. The problem is administrative.

The biggest challenge in Bangladesh hockey currently is retaining players aged 21 to 25 in the game. At this age, young people decide—they will join a services team, take a bank job, or stay in hockey. My tracking says more than half of the players of the 2026 Junior AHF Cup-winning team will not get the opportunity to play in the domestic league within two years, unless the league becomes regular.

I will end with a question. If by 2026 the Bangladesh Hockey Federation does not publish a permanent league calendar, what is the benefit of qualifying to play in the Junior World Cup? We dream the national team will play the World Cup, but the foundation of that dream is built from domestic matches.

The question is not for the federation, it is for all of us. When did you last watch a domestic hockey match? If the answer is no, then before blaming cricket, look at yourself.

"Every clean number is a confession somebody else did not want to make."

I close my notebook. 64 matches, a year archiving a season that refused to exist. But I believe, next year there will perhaps be more matches. And I will draw them. Because without data the game doesn't survive, and without data we will never know—what was Bangladesh hockey's penalty corner conversion rate over the last five years.

I want to make one thing clear. I do not want to present my notebook or my work as any kind of authoritative document. I see it as a methodological necessity. 64 hand-drawn matches are not a statistical set, it is a sample—with no tracking technology behind it. So I always say, 'what I saw in the matches I watched myself.' I never let a hand-drawn shot map represent a full season's statistical record.

But alongside this admission, my question remains unchanged: why has a federation that has been an FIH member since 2026 never measured its own product? Until this question is answered, Bangladesh hockey will remain an accidentally lost game—with no memory, no account.