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“It has become nasty in that the way things are being written in the media. Media has become fishy these days. I think, we have to rethink if the development of cricket is being hampered due to the role of media. I have played professional cricket for a lot of years. Gossips, criticism were also there in the past. But these days, some things are going beyond control. We are becoming negative on specific issues so much these days. “I am not a God. I am Khaled Mahmud Sujon, a simple person. Whether people recognise it or not, I always love to work with Bangladesh cricket. Maybe I am not strong technically, maybe I have some lacking. But when wrong things are written about me, then it hurts. It has been written that, as I am also the coach of Abahani Limited, I expelled Mosaddek [Hossain] so that he can play for Abahani in the Dhaka Premier League. It really hurts me. When someone asks question about my national interest than it’s really irritating for me. I will always prefer Bangladesh than Abahani or any other thing. If Mosaddek and Abahani issue becomes the main reason why Bangladesh lost the Test series, then it becomes really frustrating. “So I am saying, media sometimes establishes some certain issues. That’s not right. People need to understand. Whatever the plan is, if players don’t execute it on the field then all those plans become useless. In a pressure situation even a world class batsman can make mistake. But nobody wants to believe it. People think that we are the world champion and we will win everything. But reality is different,” Sujon explained. Sujon believes Bangladesh lost the Test series because players did not play well and failed to execute the plan on the field. Preparing turning wickets against Sri Lanka should not be used as an excuse, admitted Sujon. “Anyways, I may become emotional. I had hope that we would win the tri-series and Test series. We started well and should have won. But I didn’t want to give any excuse. Wicket is definitely not an excuse. Sri Lanka also played on similar wicket. Roshen Silva, who played a few matches in Test cricket, batted well on the same pitch. Then how can he become successful, whereas our batsmen failed?” said Sujon. “We knew what kind of wicket will be prepared. Sri Lanka are not God. They have batsmen like Kusal Mendis and Dhananjaya de Silva. Although we missed Shakib al Hasan, still we had a good bowling line-up. “We selected [Abdur] Razzak, who recently took 500 first-class wickets. Taijul Islam played plenty of Tests. Mehedi Hasan Miraz took 19 wickets against England. How can we say we had inexperienced bowling attack? We should admit that our players did not play well, rather than blaming the wicket.”
