Why are Bangladesh fans ‘upset’ over calling the Darwin Test win an ‘upset’?

Bangladesh have just annihilated Australia in Darwin, producing the greatest Test victory in the country's history. The Tigers are celebrating, while the wounded hosts are recovering from what many are pondering as the most shocking result in Test cricket history. And somewhere on social media, a Bangladesh supporter is arguing with the dictionary.

The disputed word is “upset”.

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Some fans have questioned the description because Bangladesh dominated the Darwin Test from almost the first session. They controlled the match, won inside four days and left more than four sessions unused.

For some Bangladesh supporters, apparently, “upset” also feels like a word that belongs to the Australian side of the story -- a way of describing what happened to the favourites rather than what Bangladesh achieved. If the Tigers spent almost the entire Test in control, why should the result be framed through Australia's surprise?

So how does an emphatic victory become an upset? This is where language gets interesting.

Cambridge Dictionary gives upset several meanings. As a verb, it can mean to make someone worried, unhappy or angry. It can also mean to change the usual or expected state or order of something.

Then comes the sporting noun: “an occasion when a player or a team beats the team or player that was expected to win.”

The word itself is rather well designed for sport. Upset can mean to disturb an established order, and that is essentially what a sporting upset does: take the result everyone had mentally put in place and knock it over.

Australia started the Darwin Test as overwhelming favourites. They were at home, fielded a full-strength side and faced a Bangladesh team missing two of their premier fast bowlers, Nahid Rana and Shoriful Islam.

Then Bangladesh won. Comfortably. By chasing just 57. That is an upset.

The word describes the expectation before the match, rather than the shape of the victory. A last-ball victory by an underdog can be an upset. So can a nine-wicket demolition.

And the margin can simply make the upset bigger. Cricinfo, a prominent cricket website, even attempted to put a number on this in 2025 with an “Upset Index”, using factors including team strength, recent form, player availability, series context and margin of victory. In other words, the nine-wicket margin belongs in the calculation of how big the upset was, rather than the argument over whether it was one.

Read more

Why Darwin is Bangladesh’s greatest Test victory

Sporting jargon is full of words that have quietly taken on lives of their own. Cricket calls weaker sides ‘minnows’, matches without meaningful consequence ‘dead rubbers’, and victories by unfancied sides ‘upsets’. Football prefers ‘giant-killings’ and ‘shocks’. Once you enter the sporting dictionary, an upset has very little to do with anyone's mood and everything to do with the pre-match pecking order.

The same principle travels through time. When Zimbabwe handed Bangladesh an innings defeat in the one-off Test in June, the result was widely described as an upset. Bangladesh were the higher-ranked side and the pre-match favourites. However, going back to the era of Heath Streak, Andy Flower and Neil Johnson, though, Zimbabwe were a very different proposition. A Zimbabwe victory over Bangladesh would have carried a very different expectation in the early 2000s.

There is still a Test to come in Mackay, where Australia will remain the stronger side on paper despite the Darwin defeat. Predicting another Australian loss will be difficult. If Bangladesh win again, though, the word “upset” will acquire another layer.

Calling the Darwin Test an upset tells us how extraordinary the result looked before Bangladesh went out and made it look remarkably straightforward.

Perhaps that is the real challenge for Bangladesh now. The country has a famously emotional relationship with its cricket team, and the Tigers are still searching for their first major international tournament title. One day, Bangladesh may reach a point where winning a major trophy is an expectation rather than a miracle, and beating Australia in a Test feels like another chapter in their evolution rather than a historic shock.

When that day comes, nobody will be reaching for the word “upset”. Darwin, however, may be remembered as one of the places where Bangladesh started making that future look possible.