That's enough. Sound the bell, throw in the towel, scrape the corpse off the canvas. Bangladesh have gone 12 rounds at cricket's highest level, and, for the moment at least, they have nothing left to give. For the sake of a proud but increasingly demoralised cricketing nation, and for the reputation of Test cricket itself, they must drop down a division, until such time as they are able to stand again. Like Henry Cooper against Cassius Clay, Bangladesh made an early impression against the big dogs, but the pounding they have since received has been painful to behold. They began with such pride, at Dhaka in November 2000, and even had India on the canvas in the very first round. Roared on by the passionate supporters that had, more than any cricketing prowess, earned them their Test status, Aminul Islam scored a thrilling debut century, Habibul Bashar weighed in with 71, and Bangladesh became only the second nation to post 400 in their inaugural Test innings, after Zimbabwe in 1992.

But they folded for 91 in their second innings, and the rest, sadly, is history. Bangladesh have received knockout blows in 11 of their matches to date, and a standing count in the 12th, when rain saved them from certain defeat against Zimbabwe at Dhaka. Eight of these hammerings have been by an innings, including the last five in a row. Their average first-innings deficit (273) exceeds their average first-innings score (191). Their legs have gone, their brain is scrambled, the cuts over their eyes have puffed up and they are bleeding profusely. Mismatches like these give sport a bad name.

Of course, it shouldn't matter that Bangladesh's Test status has got off to a less-than-impressive start. After all, they are not the first fledgings to have trouble spreading their wings. South Africa lost ten of their first 11 Tests, most of them by gargantuan margins; New Zealand fared even worse, requiring 26 years and 45 matches to get off the mark. It was sheer love of cricket that earned Bangladesh their Test status, and once upon a time that would have been enough to keep it.

But the days of the plucky amateur are long gone. Professional sport these days is a multi million-dollar industry, and Bangladesh's punch-drunk pitifulness has no place in the modern era, however harsh that assessment may be. Watching Bangladesh concede a Test-record 509 runs in a day has all the allure of watching a car-crash; it is a habit that people will admit to furtively, but what chance anyone of sound mind paying money for the privilege? If English grounds cannot sell out when such aristocrats as Mahela Jayawardene and Aravinda de Silva come to play, Javed Omar and Al-Sahariar Rokon might as well knock up with a golf ball behind the pavilion.

But the constraints of the ICC Ten-Year Plan require each and every nation to go through the motions, despite the constant murmurings about burnout and overkill that have already put paid to Graham Thorpe's one-day career, and may well account for several others before the winter is out.

Australia have taken a novel approach, conferring Test status upon remote Darwin and Cairns, presumably to ensure that the slaughter of the innocents takes place beyond the reaches of mass civilisation, while Sri Lanka's experimental team for the second Test, named long in advance of today's innings-and-196-run thumping, is utterly unrecognisable from the side that won nine matches in a row. Even in the first Test Sri Lanka rested their first-choice new-ball attack of Chaminda Vaas and Nuwan Zoysa.

Test matches are aptly named: they imply a test of skills between two (reasonably) evenly matched sides. It devalues the record-books when Sanath Jayasuriya's run of low scores is rescued by an untaxing innings of 145, or when the 503 runs that Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Woolley and Hendren scored in a day at Lord's in 1924 is overtaken almost by accident.

Bangladesh may one day belong at the top table, and given the average age of their current side, that day may be far sooner than anyone would dare to expect. But until then they would do themselves, and the game, a favour by returning to the second division to conduct meaningful matches with the likes of Kenya and UAE, whose own development would benefit from the lessons that Bangladesh have learnt the hard way.

But the future is not all doom and gloom. Bangladesh have in their ranks a batsman, Habibul Bashar, whose average hovers around the 40 mark; no mean feat in a side that consistently fails to score 200 in an innings, and a pair of fast bowlers, Mashrafee bin Murtoza and Talha Jubair, who are 18 and 16 respectively. They also boast, in Mohammad Ashraful, the youngest player in history to score a Test century. Ashraful was just 17 years and 63 days old when he made a devil-may-care 114 against Sri Lanka on September 8, 2001, though he has been so traumatised by his experiences since, that he could barely buy a run at the Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand last winter and missed the recent Colombo carnage.

But that is the nature of Test cricket - the survivors are those that have the mental toughness to match their natural ability. If Steve Waugh's early experiences are anything to go by, Bangladesh will be world-beaters in ten years' time. But even Waugh needed a period of exile to reappraise his game. The poor Bangladeshis, at present, have nowhere to hide.

Andrew Miller is editorial assistant of Wisden.com

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