For nearly the last two decades, Shakib Al Hasan was the main man of the Bangladesh national cricket team. The whole team seemed to be formed around him. He built the most extraordinary cricket career for the country. He was more than a player, larger than anything else.

But now, none of those excuses for what he chose to do.

Shakib joined the Awami League when the party was in power for around 15 years. They were already accused of enforced disappearances, electoral manipulation, and all kinds of repression of the opposition.

He knew all of these, but still, he joined them.

He wasn't a naive outsider who misstepped into the wrong room- he walked in carefully, stood with them happily, and won a parliamentary seat in the 2024 election that the main opposition had boycotted entirely.

He did all of these when he was still wearing the Bangladesh national team jersey, still representing the country.

A cricketer can have political beliefs. That's not the issue to debate. The issue is timing, and what the timing says about judgment. When you publicly attach yourself to a ruling party at that particular moment in its history, you are not just expressing a preference- you are lending your name to it, you are selling what you have achieved over the years by playing cricket and with the love of people.

And Shakib's name has always meant something.

Then came July-August 2024. The popular uprising. The brutal crackdown. International observers documented mass casualties. Sheikh Hasina fled the country in the face of unprecedented protests, and the government collapsed around her.

Shakib, who has been out of the country for more than a year, wants to come home and play for the Bangladesh team again. He said he will come if he is assured of his safety. That's a fair legal ask, and that's his right, not a privilege. He must be able to defend himself in court without being worried about security.

But legality and accountability are not the same conversation. Shakib seems to want to have only one of them.

In a recent interview, the tone was what got me. Not angry, not defensive - almost breezy. As if 2024 were just a rough patch in the normal rhythm of politics, rather than a moment when the state killed its own people indiscriminately for protesting in the streets.

He said that every life matters - protesters and police alike. And yes, technically, that's true.

But when you say it like that, in that context, without any acknowledgment of who had the guns and who didn't, it stops sounding like empathy. This kind of statement avoids the real question and makes it seem like there is no meaningful difference between those who caused harm and those who suffered it.

Earlier, when the wounds of the protesters, and deep grie of families who lost their loved ones were fresh and public anger was at its peak, he issued a careful statement expressing concern.

People read it as exactly what it looked like- an attempt to soften his image at a moment when he needed a path back home.

Since then, he's moved away even from that. The tone has shifted toward something more like normalization - as if these things happen, as if you can't really assign blame, as if the whole thing were just unfortunate weather.

He made it clear he won't reconsider his loyalty to the Awami League. And there's little sign he has paused to think about what that decision meant, or why it matters.

This is the thing about Shakib. He was once genuinely above politics - bigger than factions, bigger than parties, the one figure most Bangladeshis could watch without it feeling like a political act. He himself gave that up voluntarily. He chose a side. And now he wants everyone to just see a cricketer again.

That's a lot to ask.

He deserves safety and legal protection - yes, absolutely. But he also owes people something harder than that- an honest answer for why he lined up with power at precisely the moment when so many of his countrymen were dying to resist it. Not a statement. Not a careful interview. An actual answer.

So far, he hasn't given one.