Desk Report,
Alok-Aftab also looking for reasons for failure
How do you see Bangladesh in this World Cup?’ — the sound of a sigh came from the other end of the phone as he asked the question. Before Aftab Ahmed could say anything, the disappointment of the former national team batsman was clear.
Alok-Aftab also looking for reasons for failure
Aftab moved to the United States a year ago to build a coaching career. Before that, he coached domestic cricket. He played with many of the current national team members, and later became their coach. Aftab is so disappointed with the performance of the Bangladesh team in the World Cup in India that he can’t seem to find any explanation for it. He was telling Prothom Alo on WhatsApp from the United States yesterday, ‘What can I say? Very disappointing performance.’
After pausing, Aftab raised a question about the Bangladesh team’s World Cup preparations, ‘Many new players have been taken, who were nowhere even a year or six months ago. The World Cup is a place where even if you make all kinds of preparations, sometimes it doesn’t work. And Bangladesh had no preparations at all! Some new players were brought in three-four months ago, this cannot be ideal preparation for the World Cup.’ Aftab does not want to blame the cricketers for the failure, ‘The World Cup is a process of at least four years. It is not right to throw a player out suddenly and blame him.’ Former national team left-arm spinner Enamul Haque Jr. is also currently in England playing club cricket. He is watching the disappointing performance of the Bangladesh team in the World Cup from there. When the topic was raised on his mobile phone, Enamul kept using one English word, ‘Disaster, absolutely disaster….’ In his eyes, there are several reasons for the disaster, ‘Our strength on flat wickets came to the fore in this World Cup. We cannot score runs on flat wickets, nor can we take wickets. If someone scores 320 against us, we cannot chase that. We don’t have a precedent for chasing big runs in domestic cricket either.’ Enamul believes, ‘Some off-field problems have also affected the team in the World Cup.’ In the eyes of former national team batsman Tushar Imran, one of the reasons for the consistent batting failure is the change in the batsmen’s positions in the World Cup, ‘Shant (Nazmul Hossain) was scoring well at number 3. He must have to adapt to the change in position. He is in doubt whether he can score runs in this position or not.
