Bangladesh Cricket Board’s new bowling coach Heath Streak said on Tuesday that he was looking forward to helping his charges by guiding them through his vast experience.
Streak completed his first day in office by getting introduced to some national team players including skipper Mushfiqur Rahim and took a look at the available facilities in and around at the home of cricket at Mirpur.
‘Experience doesn’t come overnight,’ Streak told reporters in his first press conference. ‘You cannot go to a shopping mall and buy experience,’ said Streak, who was looking to focus primarily with the national bowlers ahead of home series against India.
Streak, 40, avoided setting any immediate goal and rather emphasized the importance of working with a core group of fast bowlers to help the Tigers bring in some variety in their bowling, largely dependent on spin.
‘Spin bowling has been strong for Bangladesh but we can’t relax and expect for that to continue,’ observed Streak, who played 65 Tests matches and 189 one-day internationals for Zimbabwe.
‘I would like to identify a group of 8-10 quick bowlers that we can use.
‘Firstly, I believe there are a couple of young guys coming through. So I am really keen to look at them.
‘Obviously getting them to become professionals – how they eat, train – is a long term thing. So we need to start that now to develop these guys and see
that they are physically good enough to cope with the international level.
‘You see many youngsters are not strong enough to cope with the international schedule. So that’s a key thing that we are going to have work with,’ said Streak.
The stocky former fast bowler, however, believes that making the pipeline of fast bowlers for the national team won’t be an easy task because of the type of wicket used in Bangladesh that he is quite familiar with.
‘One of the big problems is that wickets in Bangladesh are very different from what you get outside,’ said Streak, Zimbabwe’s all-time leading all-rounder with 4933 runs and 455 wickets in international cricket.
‘Developing fast bowlers become difficult and it is one of the challenges.
‘We saw in the World T20 that wickets were good, and it can be prepared to assist fast bowlers a bit more. So hopefully we can do that in the grounds available to us,’ he pointed out.
Streak was looking forward to a good understanding with Tigers’ new head coach Chandika Hathurusinghe, who will arrive next week.
‘I have got to make sure my coaching philosophies and his [Hathurusinghe] are going to merge together,’ said Streak.
‘It’s not just the players that need to be a good team. The coaching staff also need to be unified.
‘We have to give the same message to the players and it’s important for them to get one consistent message,’ he said.
-With New Age input
