Bangladesh national team head coach Chandika Hathurusinghe must watch the important domestic league matches if he is to act as a national selector, Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hasan said on Monday. Hathurusinghe looks all but certain to be included in a completely revamped selection panel that the BCB is set to introduce reportedly to fulfill the personal desire of the Sri Lankan coach.
While Hathurusinghe has always enjoyed some kind of authority over the selectors he did not have the voting power that denied him an opportunity to include all the players of his choice.
It was argued that before getting included in the selection panel Hathurusinghe must be in a position from where he can judge all possible contenders by watching them perform in domestic leagues.
The coach preferred to remain in leave during the last Bangladesh Premier League and the ongoing Dhaka Premier League, which deprived him of the chance.
‘I want the coach to watch domestic matches. Whenever he has time he should watch cricket played in our country instead of sitting around,’ said Nazmul said in Mirpur on Monday.
‘In fact I want all selectors to be involved more with domestic cricket and they should be aware of all the upcoming cricketers coming through the processes.
‘I don’t want that when a name of a new player is in discussion coach should not act as if he does not know him at all,’ he said.
It was reported that Hathurusinghe took an advantage of national team’s recent success by obtaining more leave than his contract permits.
According to his contract, he is permitted to take just one month leave in a year while he already enjoyed a leave of two months in 2016.
He left Dhaka on March 30 after the ICC World Twenty20 and will not return until June 1.
While speaking to reporters, BCB president Nazmul admitted that he is unaware of Hathurusinghe’s leave clause but promised to look into the matter.
Nazmul invited the technical committee members at his office on Monday to take their advice on the proposed restructuring of the selection committee.
The BCB working committee already proposed a seven-member selection panel comprised of four regular selectors, national team head coach, manager and cricket operations chief.
Nazmul was looking forward to know the opinion of the technical committee in this regard as some of its members had the opportunity to work as national selectors.
‘We have already got the recommendations of working committee. Now we got the opinion of technical committee members,’ said Nazmul.
‘We will discuss those in BCB meeting before making the final decision,’ he said, adding that the inclusion of national team manager in the selection panel, another controversial move, is not final.
‘Whether the manager will be included or not is yet to come forward as a proposal for consideration,’ said Nazmul.
Asked why the restructuring of selection panel was needed at a time when the team is doing well, Nazmul said they took the initiative to make the process ‘more beautiful.’
‘I think our selectors did a fine job,’ he said. ‘But we want to make it more beautiful. Presently we have three selectors. We want to add another person and coach, who was also part of the selection committee in the past.’
The BCB president added that he took advice on some other issues from technical committee members, which includes former cricketers Shafiqul Haque, Mainul Haque, Ishtiaq Ahmed, ASM Faruque, Jahangir Shah, Athar Ali Khan.
‘The issues included bowling coach, the development of Test cricket and the standard of umpiring in lower-tier,’ said the BCB president.
-With New Age input
