Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president AHM Mustafa Kamal met with numerous former national captains and incumbent Shakib Al Hasan yesterday to share views about improvement of cricket standard of the country.
The common view in the marathon meeting was that the structure of domestic cricket should improve, especially first-class cricket, if Bangladesh are to reach a certain level in world cricket.
“I met with them because I want to involve the former cricketers with the board activities as much as possible. I shared views with them because I have some planning and a mission to take the sport to a certain level,” said Kamal after his meeting.
“Because of the World Cup, I couldn’t give my full attention on this issue as it was also a big challenge for us, but we must now concentrate on our domestic structure if we want to improve our game. We mainly focused on our first-class competition in the discussion,” said the BCB boss, adding that they have a plan to make a dedicated ground for each major competition and that they would start their new development work from Rajshahi.
The brainstorming session was attended by former national captains Roquibul Hasan, Gazi Ashraf Hossain, Akram Khan, Minhajul Abedin, Naimur Rahman, Khaled Mahmud, Khaled Mashud, Habibul Bashar, Mohammad Ashraful and the current skipper Shakib.
Among the elite players who know the game better than anybody else in the country, Naimur Rahman made a very interesting observation after the meeting.
“Without any doubt, it’s a good initiative from the BCB president (AHM Mustafa Kamal). Lot of things came into the discussion. But the reality is that we have been discussing these issues for a long time, so there is nothing new. We have to implement it which is the main challenge,” said skipper Naimur, who is known for his cut-throat approach.
Understandably it’s good initiative from the BCB boss. But the reality is that Mr Kamal is certainly not the first person to have realized that our improvement in Test cricket hinges on a strong platform of our first-class cricket. It has been discussed time and again over the years but the main problem is with the implementation of those ideas.
Before the start of a new domestic season, the authority concerned always promises a lot but things have yet changed little in one decade. So, the general consensus seems to be that it is high time to start the work first rather than spending time only sharing the views.
If someone looks at the current Test teams, the reason why Australia is still a top team is because the gap between their first-class cricket and the standard of their Test cricket is minimal. For the world’s top teams any player from the first-class structure can walk into the national team, so we should look at ways and means of strengthening the first-class structure because that is the structure that is going to provide cricketers for the national team.
These are the issues which had been discussed individually and as well as in the different forums and the need of regional cricket associations was also discussed on many occasions and it has been said many times that the infrastructure would also have to be improved. In reality though, the progress has been limited.
Things might have improved a little bit in terms of facilities but still the ‘picnic mood’ has prevailed with the country’s most important domestic competition; the National Cricket League and there was no exception in the last competition which ended a few weeks back.
So, the problem is not with the ideas but in its implementation.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
