"Bangladesh! Bangladesh!"
The chants rang out from a small section of passionate fans decked in green and red with national flags waving behind the players' dugout.
You would be forgiven for thinking this was Dhaka, with the noise cutting through the warm air. But it was Darwin, the closest Australian city to Bangladesh in geographical terms but a world away in reality, with its sparse population, red dirt, and crocodile-infested beaches.
As GANGgajang wrote in their hit single "Sounds of Then": "This is Australia", where men are men and Australian cricketing heroes visit once every two decades to beat Bangladesh teams to a pulp.
But the chants proved otherwise. Bangladesh were doing the beating and an Australian team boasting the only attack in history with a quartet of Test bowlers in the 300 club, and their best batter since Sir Donald Bradman, were being thrashed.
The chants grew louder as Beau Webster trundled in to bowl to Mominul Haque on day four. When the ball cracked from Mominul's bat to deep backward point, there was no "Cut away, cut away for four!" cry on commentary like there had been when Ben Stokes did it famously in the 2019 Headingley Ashes Test. But the moment was no less significant. Bangladesh had pulled off arguably the greatest upset in Test history.
Eight days earlier, exactly 311 metres away from the Marrara Stadium pitch as the crow flies, another humiliation had taken place. Bangladesh had been bowled out for 54 to lose by an innings to a Cricket Australia XI in the three-day tour match.
The CA XI boasted only two Test players, who had seven Test caps between them. A 22-year-old left-arm seamer with one first-class game to his name took 8 for 25. A 22-year-old batter with a first-class average of 20.79 made 130.
This defeat had come on the heels of Bangladesh losing to Zimbabwe by an innings in three days in Harare in June.
Bangladesh's cool-headed coach, Phil Simmons, admitted his side had "let ourselves down" in the tour game.
There was genuine concern in Australia about what was about to unfold. After Cricket Australia lost A$5-10 million (US$3.3-6.6m) thanks to two two-day Ashes Tests last summer, the thought of another was troubling. It was even worse for the Northern Territory government, who had tipped in A$500,000 ($355,000) to host the game. There was great risk for NT Cricket, too, the governing body for the game in an underfunded cricketing territory, who had sold 15,000 tickets and were fighting desperately to host more international cricket, and specifically Test cricket, after 22 years without it.
The curator, Jake Pavlich, was nervous, having never produced a Test pitch before. A drop-in had hosted only one first-class game in 2025 and no cricket at all in 2026. There had been unseasonably humid weather in the week leading in, which created some unknowns with his pitch preparation.
One Australian newspaper reprinted a quote from 2003, when former Australia batter David Hookes had suggested Steve Waugh's team should try and beat Bangladesh in a single day. They beat them in three, by an innings.
But amid all the worry, Travis Head provided a prophetic statement when asked whether he read anything into the tour game. "Not a hell of a lot," he said ahead of the first Test. "I've played in some pretty poor ones over the years as well, and they're always a challenge because you've got your mind probably elsewhere. That's no disrespect to the CA team, but there'll be guys in that Bangladesh team that are only purely worrying about Thursday and what they need to get out of it."
All the talk at the start of the week was about anything other than the contest itself. Alex Carey, Jake Weatherald and Taskin Ahmed did a joint press conference on the East Point beachfront on Monday before the trio took a boat ride to see the mangroves, the same boat the two Australians had been out fishing in the previous day.
Taskin cut a relaxed figure in his purple sunglasses, showing child-like joy about the "honour" of playing in Australia and the hope of chatting to his heroes Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.
Carey was asked about Australia's 21-Test odyssey to come, with an obligatory question about England.
The week was also all about local lad Weatherald's homecoming. Local journalists dressed up like him at press conferences, and he mentioned trying to get a Darwin Cricket Club reunion on the third evening of the Test.
Taskin was asked about how he would bowl to Head. But neither Head nor Weatherald was asked about how they would handle Hasan Mahmud, a name that was not breathed once across the seven press conferences held across three days leading into the game, but one who was familiar with Darwin, having played for Bangladesh A in the Top End T20 series last year. Tanzid Hasan, another name not mentioned in the build-up, had played for Bangladesh's High Performance XI in the same tournament in Darwin in 2024.
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The 13th hole of Darwin Golf Club runs parallel to the nets at the Marrara, with the out-of-bounds fence also acting as the fence of the cricket facility. A push slice from a right-handed golfer or a pull hook from a lefty from the 13th tee will inevitably end up in the nets.
There was much amusement when a ball landed in there during Bangladesh's Tuesday afternoon nets session. It was amusing because one of Australia's coaches was the culprit. Simmons held the ball aloft, joking that it had almost hit him.
Not long after, two more landed in the nets, one on the roof and another near where Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Taijul Islam were bowling under the watchful eye of Mushtaq Ahmed. Steven Smith had struck one of the balls. A social media clip of Marnus Labuschagne dobbing him in when the ball was returned went viral.
Bangladesh continued their practice. The Australians continued their rounds. It should be noted this is not unusual for Australia's players. They had trained in the morning and had a free afternoon. They played plenty of golf in the week leading into the first Ashes Test last summer and beat England in two days, and went on to win the series 4-1. They played golf before the WTC and ODI World Cup finals in 2023 and won both trophies.
The volume of training of the two teams this week was the same but the vibe was different. Bangladesh had had their wake-up call against the CA XI and were intent on it not happening again. Australia were yet to have theirs.
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Hasan and Ebadot Hossain charged in to bowl to their team-mates on Wednesday, less than 24 hours out from the first ball of the match. There were furrowed brows among the experienced Australian journalists watching, who noted that none of Australia's cartel would bowl with such effort the day before a game, especially given the heat and humidity, with a premium placed on remaining fresh for when it mattered. It's hard to argue with that thinking; each of those bowlers has more than 300 Test wickets and they form a trio of all-time greats.
Along similar lines, one of the great anecdotes from Australia's 2023 ODI World Cup triumph was their coaches visiting Ahmedabad's Narendra Modi Stadium after sunset when no one was around to inspect how much dew was on the ground in the evening. Such attention to detail instructed them to bowl first at the toss, and the rest became history.
But on Wednesday they did not inspect Marrara Stadium's drop-in surface until midday, when most of the morning moisture had burned off. The pitch was "rock hard" underneath, according to Cummins. A bat-first plan was formulated.
Winning the toss on Thursday was Australia's only victory of the week. The decision to bat proved costly. The ball moved more for two hours than at any other time in the match. Mahmud bagged Weatherald and Head for the first time in Tests but not the last. Australia rolled over for 198.
Even then there was a sense that it would be inconsequential. They were bowled out for 132 in their first innings of the Ashes and won the Test and the series easily.
But in the second over of Bangladesh's reply, Australia dropped a catch. It was the first of five that would be grassed. Bangladesh batted for 138 overs and posted 426. Hazlewood, who took 6 for 89, admitted to some match rust in terms of his consistency despite excellent physical preparation.
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Bangladesh's visiting journalists had as much fun covering Jason Gillespie's presence as a radio commentator in Darwin as they did the Test itself. Gillespie needs no invitation to talk about his 201 not out in Chattogram in 2006, and happily obliged.
Out in the middle, it was assumed another Australian would do something similar to get the home side out of a jam, with one player noting quietly that such an individual score was out there for anyone good enough.
Australia just about managed to score 200-plus collectively the second time round. Twenty-one of the first 23 wickets of the match had fallen to seamers. Mehidy, the Bangladesh offspinner, then claimed five of the next seven - on an Australian drop-in, to only further confuse any who had mistaken the venue for Dhaka rather than Darwin.
As Australia's lead crept past 50 with only one wicket remaining, one travelling journalist said: "This is tough for Bangladesh now." It raised questions among the local journalists, who were already putting the finishing touches on their accounts of Australia's imminent defeat. "If you have seen what we've seen, you'd say the same thing," came another response.
The truth was, no one had seen anything like this.
As Tanzid and Shadman Islam walked out to bat to chase 57 for a famous victory, another nervous whisper was heard: "So three more than they scored in the practice match."
There were nerves in the Bangladesh dressing room as Shadman inside-edged Starc over the stumps to get off the mark. There was dread when Hazlewood rattled Tanzid's off stump with 53 needed. Starc then reared a rocket into the shoulder of Shadman's bat, but it flew over a leaping Smith at second slip and away to the rope to a collective sigh.
From there the chase was a breeze. With 20 to win, Nathan Lyon was bowling with three men on the fence. Cummins nearly gave Head a bowl when there were concerns Australia might be penalised for a slow over-rate.
The Bangladesh chants grew louder until they reached a crescendo when Mominul cracked the winning runs. The entire Bangladesh touring party leapt to their feet. They celebrated not with a huge group hug but rather a heap of high-tens, the kind their coach gave his team-mates when West Indies pulled off a one-run heist in Adelaide 33 years ago. Simmons, instead, gave his captain Najmul Hossain Shanto a bear hug.
Nine years after he and Litton Das had first come to Darwin for a training camp, Shanto had become the first Bangladesh captain to win a Test on Australian soil. Mushfiqur Rahim had waited 21 years and 103 Tests to get a chance to play a Test in Australia. He sprinted to the middle to grab a stump as a souvenir of victory. There were tears too from chief selector Habibul Bashar, who had made Bangladesh's only half-century in their innings defeat to Australia in Darwin 23 years earlier.
The team posed for selfies with fans and then a squad photo on the ground. Shanto took a video call from Bangladesh's prime minister, Tarique Rahman, while Cummins looked shell-shocked as he faced questions about the defeat. A short while later, Shanto was describing it as Bangladesh's greatest ever victory and no one could argue with that.
Darwin will always hold a special place in Bangladeshi hearts as the city where their cricketers did something truly extraordinary.