SHANE unlikely to reconsider
Bangladesh coach Shane Jurgensen is in no mood to reverse his decision, according to sources close to the Australian. Jurgensen, who sent the board his resignation letter on Monday, may at most stay till the India series in June.
The board is yet to accept his resignation and are likely to try to negotiate with the coach, who is contracted till the 2015 World Cup. Jurgensen, who arrives in Dhaka today, is expected to have a series of meetings with the board regarding his future.
His main reason behind his resignation, as put in his e-mail to the board, was that he was unhappy about the comments made by some of the directors. The following day BCB directors Jalal Yunus and Akram Khan termed the decision an 'emotional' one and said that the comments made by the directors were unofficial, before asserting that they had never planned to remove Jurgensen from his post.
As unexpected as Jurgensen's decision may be, one cannot help but question the motives of the directors who made those comments in the first place. In a T20 league-dominated era, coaches are hard to find and with a 50-over World Cup just over nine months away, making such statements to the media is a move fraught with danger.
Jurgensen may have had a bad run this year, with a string of defeats to Sri Lanka and a horrible World Twenty20 campaign. However, Bangladesh achieved certain crucial landmarks under him. Defeating the West Indies at home, putting up a stellar performance in Sri Lanka, winning their fourth ever Test in Zimbabwe and then whitewashing New Zealand for the second time in a row; these performances speak for themselves. If a board director reckons that three months of poor results can outweigh a year and a quarter's worth of growth in ODIs and Tests, then no coach will survive in Bangladesh.
Making empty promises has been an old habit of the board's and the press briefing which followed Jurgensen's resignation reflected that. The immediate reaction of the BCB directors was that they would work to the best of their abilities to bring coaches from South Africa or any other country to make a replacement.
Even if BCB's statements were true and they magically manage to bring the likes of Gary Kirsten, the fact remains that a coach, no matter how high the profile, will need to make that extra effort to adjust with officials here and that is what Jurgensen successfully managed to do for most of his career; until of course, this last week.
Immediately after the World Twenty20, there was talk about bringing a new batting coach, a bowling consultant and a fielding coach; all in a bid to escape the critical fallout from the tournament.
With Jurgensen having resigned Bangladesh have not only lost a head but also their prime pace bowling coach. In the next few weeks the board will have to literally rebuild their entire team management from scratch, a task which, going by the way things have functioned recently, seems improbable.
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