BCB game development chairman Khaled Mahmud called for transparency in the player’s selection process at the root level of Bangladesh cricket. The BCB director who is also a level three coach voiced his concern with the media on the issue following a meeting with BCB district coaches on Saturday.
Former Bangladesh captain Mahmud informed a meeting between the BCB game development and the 64 district coaches is held every year. Work from the past year, success rate discussion and plan for the upcoming year is drawn in the meeting. This year however, the meeting emphasized on making coaches understand the vital role they play at root level and importance of an unbiased selection process, explain Mahmud.
“Most of the coaches here are level two qualified, which we prefer. For the districts that do not have a level two coach, we appoint a level one coach. All the coaches are qualified and have been involved in this field for many years,” Mahmud expressed to the media at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Saturday.
“Unfortunately, coaches here are under the District Sports Association and they are often pressurized to take some preferred players in the team. We as the governing body of cricket try to ease those pressures from the coaches but honestly we are not always successful in doing that. The coaches also run private academies so we find many players coming from those academies while players from other academies gets neglected. We are trying to monitor those issues which started last year. So in this workshop we try to make them understand the importance of their role. They are not only a coach but they are also selectors. It is their responsibility to find a talented cricketer and push them into the pipeline. The coaches that fail to act as per the guideline will be replaced. There are around 300 coaches that are eagerly waiting to get into BCB,” the BCB director explained.
Bangladesh is progressing in international cricket but at the same time the sport is getting Dhaka centric. Over the years this has demotivated the division and district sports associations. Cricket leagues are irregular and have an adverse effect at root level, and mainly age level cricket which is greatly responsible for finding young talents and bringing them into system.
“We work with young players of 14, 15 and 16 years of age. These cricketers are selected by the coaches and forwarded to us. To be honest arranging leagues at district level is not our job, it totally depends on the district sports association,” said Mahmud.
“It is very upsetting to see not many leagues organized now. I myself played a lot of tournaments outside at age-level and got to know many cricketers from those tournaments. But it has drastically decreased now. Many of the districts don’t have age-level leagues. It is a concern for our cricket. Players at this level work really hard but they have a poor game sense as they are not able to play enough. All the foreign coaches complain that the cricketers at age-level have very little game sense. I think the board should inspire the districts to organize leagues on regular basis,” the former Bangladesh all-rounder added.