Raising coaches’ ability ‘to serve players’ in Ross’s agenda

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) started a five-day Level 3 Coaching course on Monday with the likes of Ross Turner, Alan Campbell and Geoff Lawson overseeing the program. BCB president Aminul Islam and Bangladesh spin-bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed are also part of the panel of educators.

The classes began at 10 am and finished in the evening. One former cricketer, having just finished a marathon first class, said : "It looks like we are doing PHD."

That appears to be the aim of the classes, readying local coaches with some experience to ingrain themselves with the ideologies of what entails Level 3 coaching.

"It's really about being able to service their needs and to be able to enrich their knowledge and to build their capacity as coaches to better serve the players," Ross told reporters after the class ended in regards to aim of the sessions.

Turner has a long-standing association with Bangladesh, having first visited Bangladesh in 2000 as ICC global development officer. He worked as BCB academy coach in 2011 and also had stints as BCB's long-term strategic consultant from 2015 to 2018.

Many of the former players that came in for the class, already has a reputation in domestic circuit, having led either BPL, Dhaka Premier League or NCL teams. The likes of Rajin Saleh, Tushar Imran. Talha Jubayer and Hannan Sarkar attended the class alongside selector Abdur Razzak for instance.

"So today we spent a good amount of time in terms of shaping philosophy. We then went to biomechanics, which actually gives us a lovely foundation from which to work.

"There was a wicket-keeping session and a pace bowling session. Tomorrow we jump into batting and then we move into fielding and so on. And then about the teaching and learning components about skill acquisition," Ross said.

Ross not only took a class, but also wanted to assess the students.

"Today was the first day, so I have a better answer for you maybe within a few days. This course, I should explain as well, is that it is residential for five days and then there's a field assignment," he said on his assessment of the first day.

"It's quite some time since there's been a course of this standard. The frequency of those courses needs to be greater…I watched the results [of today's class] with a degree of fondness because we know many of your senior players in some of those formats because of the time that I spent here with the National Academy.

He was keen on developing this current batch so that one day they would step up to perhaps spread the doctrines of level 2 coaching at the very least.

"Yes, so there's a small difference in, so this is a coaching course and there's some high-quality cricket players. That's an advantage if they've got this lovely, in lots of different ways, but they are ambassadors of the game, they follow the game, they're also assisting in some circumstances. Current, contemporary players are stepping their way through.

"That's really helpful. If their training is high-quality, we would anticipate that we will get a good result from this. Assuming that's the case, then that's precisely the outcome that we're looking for," Ross said.

Above all, he reminded of need to improve constantly, which is how the programme is being designed.

"All coaches, need to improve constantly and then that will enable standards to be raised and for playing standards to be sort of connected to that," he reminded.