The Bangladesh Cricket Board is in desperate need of a specialist batting coach for the emerging young cricketers and for helping out the national team
members when required, said the officials on Monday.
The necessity of a specialist batting coach came to the fore after the BCB recently decided to send the national team’s assistant coach, Corey Richard, on a three-week tour to the UK with the A team.
Corey joined the Tigers primarily as a fielding coach but with no batting coach around he was given an additional job of the team’s batting consultant until a fulltime batting coach is appointed.
To its surprise, the BCB recently discovered that it is not only the national team but the other teams, including the National Cricket Academy and the age-level teams, also do not have a coach with solid batting background.
The situation is so grave that the BCB does not have anyone at its disposal to assist the batting group in the national team’s training camp in the absence of Corey.
It is expected that some of the regular team members will fly to UK with the A team, but the head coach wanted someone to assist him for the remaining batsmen in the camp.
Jurgensen made this request to the BCB’s cricket operations committee recently only for the officials to find out there is actually none among its foreign staff to take up the interim assignment.
Apart from Jurgensen and Corey, the Tigers support staff include only trainer David Dwyer and physio Vibahav Singh.
In the NCA there are only High Performance manager Richard McInnes, strength and conditioning coach Stuart Karppinen, physiotherapist Brett Harrop and pace bowling coach Ranadev Bose.
Local coach Mizanur Rahman and Zafrul Ehsan are currently in charge of the Under-23 and Under-19 sides respectively, but they also do not have any playing background as batsman.
BCB cricket operations chairman Enayet Hossain Siraj admitted the scarcity and said they are seriously looking for a foreign batting coach.
‘We are looking for a foreign batting coach as there is no specialist trainer in this department,’ said Siraj.
‘But rather than appointing a specialist batting coach for the national team, we are looking for someone who can help groom the cricketers at the academy level as well as help the national players when required,’ said Siraj.
Siraj cited the example of former Bangladesh coach and West Indies great Gordon Greenidge, who has a long playing career as a batsman as well as some coaching experience.
‘It should be someone like Gordon as he had a tremendous impact on the boys during his tenure,’ said Siraj.
It was learnt that the selectors are also in favour of recruiting a specialised batting coach instead of someone like Corey, who is holding only an interim job.
‘We should look for someone who is a genuine batting coach,’ said Habibul Bashar, a selector and a former national captain. ‘A good batting coach can help rectify the problems of a batsman much faster than someone who is just managing the job,’ he said.
-With New Age input
