BCB to monitor grassroots

A lot has been said about the grassroots pipeline for Bangladesh cricket but it remains to be one of the biggest concerns for the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). However, the BCB's game development committee arranged a coordination meeting, comprised of all 64 district coaches, yesterday with the aim of creating transparency when it comes to selecting age-level players.

Each year, the BCB arranges quite a few national camps after the participating players are selected from all over the country through the age-level and district tournaments.

There have been allegations that favouritism plays a part when district coaches select players for the camp. However, according to the chairman of the game development committee Khaled Mahmud, the board will now strictly monitor the various coaches' activities and whoever fails to act accordingly will be replaced.

"All the coaches are qualified and have been involved in this field for many years. But as you know, they are under the District Sports Association and they are often pressured into taking some 'preferred' players in the team. We, as the governing body of our country's cricket, try to ease that pressure for the coaches but honestly we are not fully successful in doing that. The coaches also run private academies therefore we find that many players come from those academies while players from other academies get neglected. So in this workshop we tried to make them understand the importance of their role and that they are not only a coach but also are selectors," Mahmud told the media yesterday.

The former Bangladesh captain also opined that the absence of district tournaments in many regions of the country is the reason behind the cricketers' lack of game sense.

"It is very upsetting to see that not many leagues are organised now. I myself played a lot of tournaments apart from age-level ones and got to know many cricketers from those tournaments. But it has drastically decreased now. Many of the districts don't have age-level leagues. It is a concern for our country's cricket. Players at this level work really hard but they have a poor game sense as they are not being able to play enough. All the foreign coaches complain that the age-level cricketers have very little game sense," said Mahmud.

Meanwhile a district coach, requesting anonymity, informed that they can continue to play favourites until the board decides to completely reshuffle the coaches from their home districts to the other regions throughout the year.

"Look it is not possible for the BCB to monitor coaches throughout the year or even assess the development just by looking at the reports. Most of the coaches have their own academies at their home town so the only way to make a difference is if the board assigns those coaches to different districts and keeps shuffling," he said.