Former stars’ interest the ‘most positive’ sign

With the intention to enhance and improve the skills of the local coaches, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) conducted a six-day Level 2 coaching course at the home of cricket in Mirpur last week.

Bangladesh cricket has come a long way since getting Test status two decades ago, but local coaches are unfortunately yet to get exposure or trust from the BCB.

There is also a huge difference when the handful of international coaches are compared to local coaches, who hunt talents from the grassroots level. There are a total of 15 High Performance senior coaches, twelve divisional coaches and 63 district coaches under the BCB's game development programme.

There are mainly three categories in coaching -- Level 1, 2 and 3 -- while there is the Level A coaching course for those who have not played Premier League or first-class cricket.

The BCB conducts Level 1 and 2 coaching courses while the Level 3 course needs to be done under the supervision of the Asian Cricket Council. Level 3 is the highest level of coaching qualification in cricket, but only a handful of Bangladeshi coaches have competed it.

There is huge interest among former national cricketers to take coaching up as a profession, with former cricketers making up half of the 30 participants this time. Female coach Dolly Rani Sarkar also took part this time.

"The most positive aspect of this course is the participation of former national cricketers. Apart from them, we have age-level and district-level coaches and coaches who were engaged in the Dhaka Premier League," BCB game development manager Abu Emam Mohammad Kawsar told The Daily Star.

"We had over a hundred candidates for the course, but we focused on the potential candidates for this programme. At the same time, former national cricketers are required to complete the Level 2 course. The intention of this course is to provide proper knowledge to coaches so that they can teach young cricketers in the correct manner."

There is also a huge vacuum when it comes to producing coaching educators, who can help coaches from lower tiers develop the skills.

Following a long gap since the last Level 2 coaching course took place in 2015, the BCB's plans to initiate training programmes was halted by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This time the board engaged the national team's foreign coaches to conduct the coaching courses to provide platforms for local coaches.

"We have the likes of Bangladesh batting coach Jamie Siddons, spin coach Rangana Herath, fielding coach Shane McDermott, fitness coach Nick Lee and HP coach Champaka Ramanayake to conduct the coaching course. We also appointed a local coach to help the participants. We had prominent coaches, the likes of Khaled Mahmud, Nazmul Abedeen Fahim, Mohammad Salahuddin, Ashfaq Bappy, Mizanur and Sohel, who conducted classes this time.

"After completing the Level 1 course, you must complete some assignments for a specific timeframe before moving onto the next level. We are planning to conduct the next training next year and assess their development in order to provide the ideal platform in the coming days," he said.