The Shere Bangla Stadium in Mirpur is a visible symbol of the changes being rung in Bangladesh cricket © Getty Images

I have fond memories of Dhaka’s venerable Bangabandhu Stadium, the venue for England’s inaugural Test against Bangladesh back in October 2003. Like the Recreation Ground in Antigua, its ramshackle nature was an integral part of its character, and the fact that both venues were situated right in the heart of their capitals was an added advantage when it came to ushering casual spectators through the gates.

In its 50-year history, the Bangabandhu hosted 17 Tests and 58 ODIs, but in 2005, it was decommissioned and handed back to the national Football Federation, to resume hosting the sport which had long been held at the ground during the monsoon season. Instead an alternative stadium was earmarked in Mirpur, a somewhat less frantic suburb 5km to the north. During England’s last visit it was still in the throes of reconstruction, but now it is ready, and it has to be said, it does look rather impressive.

In keeping with the Bangladeshi experience, the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium has its unconventional aspects. The exterior, for instance, is entirely dominated by furniture stores, which have burrowed deep into the triangular cavities beneath the stands, and where you can purchase a lavishly carved dining-room table for a pre-haggle price of 10,000 taka (roughly £100), with a cup of tea thrown into the bargain.

On match days, the shops are forced to close, and for the 2011 World Cup they may well have to be cleared out entirely to meet with the ICC’s stringent requirements. But for the manager of Rifat Furniture, Mr Jalil (whose determination to refit my London bedroom was admirable but futile) the future will be what it will be. Having managed his particular store for the past ten years, he seemed content to count the blessings he’d already accumulated.

But the future, as far as Bangladesh cricket is concerned, is unquestionably centred on Mirpur. As one of the England support staff suggested, it’s Dhaka’s answer to the Gabba, for it is an amphitheatre of a venue which is unquestionably a “stadium”, as opposed to a “ground” – a subtle distinction that could make it feel rather cold and chasm-like during next month’s Test, if the crowds fail to pack its 30,000 capacity. But for a day-night ODI, it promises to serve up quite a spectacle, even if the rickety old floodlights are still the same ones that used to light up football matches in its previous incarnation.

The stadium is also the new home of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, and it’s fair to say that that fact has helped to limit the cost-cutting on the refit. The board was previously housed on the upper floors of a chaotic bazaar in Gulshan, and so the chance to have a proper reception, with portraits of Bangladesh’s captains lining the walls of the corridors, and spacious offices looking over the field from midwicket, was important in terms of raising the governing body’s prestige. How much this all impacts on other areas of Bangladesh cricket is a moot point. As one official admitted, he’d never been to Fatullah, that unloved adjunct at which England went through their warm-ups, and he never intended to either.

But if that means the BCB’s eggs are all in one basket, then at least the upshot is a focal point of the sort that was distinctly lacking at the time of England’s last tour. Take the mundane issue of a proper nets facility, for instance. Mirpur’s cordoned-off practice area, just across the road from the main stadium, has eight lanes of grass nets and a sizeable indoor school.

It’s no better or worse than the sort of complex that you might find at Leicester or Northampton. But compared to the extraordinary thatched hut at the Bangladesh Institute of Sport in the far-distant district of Savar, which until 2005 was the only all-weather practice facility in the entire country, it is a massive improvement. Six years ago in monsoonal conditions, Michael Vaughan’s squad spent up to an hour-and-a-half a day traipsing backwards and forwards to that lonely indoor school, as the surface at the Bangabandhu was waterlogged beyond salvation.

And there again is another reason why Mirpur is an improvement. Bangladesh’s temperamental weather is hardly a national secret, but thanks to the extensive excavations that were necessary to convert the ground from its rectangular football past to its oval cricketing present, the drainage at the new stadium is about as good as you will find in the subcontinent.

The media facilities, for what it’s worth, are also pretty impressive, with a high vantage point and a Lord’s style glass frontage, quite unlike the 1950s schoolroom atmosphere of the old Bangabandhu with its graffitied wooden desks and air of irreversible decay. It is what you might term a start. What it needs now is a team to apply a finish.

	Graeme Swann issues his own peculiar greeting to the crowd at Fatullah © Getty Images

It’s been six long years since I set foot in Bangladesh, but after 48 hours, it feels as though I’ve never been away. In my experience, which includes journeys to all parts of the cricket-playing world, as well as seven months’ hitchhiking through Africa, I have never known a land with an embrace that’s so unrelenting. For better or for worse – for reasons of hospitality on the one hand, and raw survival instinct on the other – the Bangladeshi welcome is the most genuine and vivid imaginable.

It’s a welcome that pervades the senses to an extent that no other country can match. First there’s the heat, an oppressive and clammy blanket of humidity that sets you up for the smothering that’s to come. Then there’s the 24-hour cacophony that plays out like a looped techno track; the bass rumble of a million motors mixed with the spiky treble of as many car horns, and embellished by the intermittent wail of the Azan and the aggressive bark of the loudhailer, as another political rally springs up on a street corner, and then melts away into the crowd.

It’s a welcome that not even the most churlish of tourists could hope to avoid. The staggering stagnation of Dhaka’s choked arteries sees to that. No city on earth can be closer to gridlock, and a 5km journey can take upwards of an hour as air-conditioned coaches compete for road-space with grimy local buses, pea-green tuk-tuks, and the wonderfully ornate bicycle rickshaws that are the city’s signature mode of transport. Even if you wished to close your eyes to the destitution on display, the glacial progress means it’s not an option. There are too many faces at the windows, and too many piles of rags in the gutters, for anything other than the brutal truth to hit home.

It is a welcome that is passionate, and sometimes frightening – not because of any implied threat from the people one encounters, far from it – but because of the burden of expectation that every new encounter brings. The only way to travel in Dhaka is by tuk-tuk. They are the scurrying ants of the city, with the speed and agility to pick the rare gaps in the traffic and inch you that much closer to your goal. But every journey begins inevitably with a squabble, as a one-on-one transaction between passenger and driver descends into a frenzy of competing offers from fixers and rivals alike, while dispossessed hangers-on take advantage of the melee to put in their pleas for “baksheesh”.

Animosity is a rarity, but that in itself is unsettling. It implies a people with too much experience of disappointment to let another set-back get them down.

Against this backdrop, England’s cricket tour is just getting underway, and anyone who questions why Bangladesh continue to under-achieve on the world stage, almost ten years after their ascent to Test status, should take a trip to Dhaka, and see for themselves the mayhem from which the country must first emerge.

	The stadium at Fatullah is only accessible via a dirt track, and has not been used for top-level cricket since 2006 © Getty Images

On my last trip to Bangladesh in 2003, the team seemed primed to make that leap from underdogs to contenders. In Dav Whatmore they had a patriarch for a coach who had just guided them to within one wicket of a maiden Test victory against Pakistan in Multan, and while their young team remained fragile, the raw materials were in place for them to grow into something formidable.

In Javed Omar, Habibul Bashar, Khaled Mashud and Mohammad Rafique, the team possessed a slender backbone of experience, while no fewer than four teenagers took the field for the second Test at Chittagong – and that number did not even include the greatest prospect of all, Mohammad Ashraful, whose form and focus was suffering (not for the last time) from the mountainous expectations of 150 million people. Since then, however, Rajin Saleh, Alok Kapali and Enamul Haque Jr have drifted in and out of contention, and only Mashrafe Mortaza has forged anything resembling a regular career – albeit his potential has been stymied by a glut of chronic knee injuries.

Sri Lanka had Arjuna Ranatunga, Zimbabwe had the Flower brothers – young stars who soaked up the experience of playing in their country’s early Tests, and had hardened to granite by the time their turn came to lead. For whatever reason, the Bangladeshi experience has lacked such a character until now, although Shakib Al Hasan is doing his utmost to make up for lost time.

But until you’ve seen Dhaka, you can’t appreciate the pressures attached to those who achieve, or appreciate the temptations to relax once you’ve made it to the top. In a revealing interview in the Wisden Cricketer, Bangladesh’s latest sensation, Tamim Iqbal, was asked what was the best thing about playing cricket for a living. “It’s a great way of life, and fame and money comes as a package,” he responded. You can’t fault him for honesty, but the ambition is not that of a man aching to push for the summit. Merely escaping the daily grind is enough of an achievement.

The same might also be said of the country’s facilities. The extraordinary outpost of Fatullah played host to one of the nearest misses in Bangladesh’s Test history, in April 2006, when a culture-shocked Australia scraped home by three wickets thanks to the indomitable spirit of Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist. It is unlikely ever to host another match of such high-profile, and having witnessed England’s warm-ups at the ground this past week, it is not hard to see why.

The ground is a grim, grey concrete bunker, accessible only via a long and bumpy dirt-track road that cuts across a swathe of paddy-fields. In March 2006, it received ICC approval to become the country’s fifth international standard venue, but by April, its purpose at the highest level had been completed. The only constant, four years on, was the unwaveringly enthusiastic support that turned out for England’s visits, with upwards of 5000 gleeful fans rolling through the gates each day.

And so, the question that was posed in 2003 remains the same to this day. Can the Bangladesh cricket team rise above its extenuating circumstances, and become the team its supporters long for it to be? It’s not yet too late, but the sands of time are surely running low. Change is afoot in the international calendar, and as a political ally, the BCB is no longer as valuable to the Indian board, now that the IPL has emerged from the pack to become the game’s outstanding market leader.

The coming five weeks will be a chance to put a case for the defence, and show that the victories in West Indies, and the spirited display against India, were not an anomaly, but a belated and welcome signal of new intent. Can it be done? Bangladesh’s supporters have to hope so, because in the long run, cricket's power-brokers will not allow themselves to be swayed by emotion.