The technical director of Bangladesh cricket team, Khaled Mahmud said he is no longer interested to work with the Tigers as, according to him, the situation has become nasty.
Bangladesh did not appoint any coach before the tri-nation ODI series involving the host, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, and handed Mahmud the role of technical director. Despite a good start to the tournament, the Tigers lost the final against the Lankans comprehensively.
The Tigers then earned a hard-fought draw in the Chittagong Test match against the Lankans, but lost the second the final Test in Dhaka within two and a half days. The next mission for the Tigers is the two-match T20I series against Sri Lanka, starting Thursday.
Bangladesh’s T20I squad took part in a training session at Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium Monday, which was supposed to be the fifth day of the Dhaka Test. Following the two-match T20I series, Bangladesh will fly to Sri Lanka to participate in a tri-nation T20I series – the Nidahas Trophy - involving India and the home side.
During training, Mahmud was bold about his involvement in the upcoming Nidahas Trophy and discussed various issues with the media, including their losses in the tri-series final and Dhaka Test.
“The board will decide who will be in charge in the upcoming Nidahas Cup. BCB gave me the responsibility of technical director so I will not say I don’t want to work. But the matter is, when anyone from Bangladesh works as a coach, it becomes a problem. Many big coaches came to Bangladesh in the past and often started their job badly. Even Chandika Hathurusingha had faced the same situation. So I have to admit the bad result and start. But there are other stories. And those things are irritating me,” said Mahmud.
“Personally I don’t have any intention to work with Bangladesh cricket. I personally feel this matter has become nasty. All these years I have worked on the development of Bangladesh cricket. I have no self-interest here. But I am not interested anymore.
“It has become nasty in that the way things are being written in the media. Media has become fishy these days. I think, we have to rethink if the development of cricket is being hampered due to the role of media. I have played professional cricket for a lot of years. Gossips, criticism were also there in the past. But these days, some things are going beyond control. We are becoming negative on specific issues so much these days.
“I am not a God. I am Khaled Mahmud Sujon, a simple person. Whether people recognise it or not, I always love to work with Bangladesh cricket. Maybe I am not strong technically, maybe I have some lacking. But when wrong things are written about me, then it hurts. It has been written that, as I am also the coach of Abahani Limited, I expelled Mosaddek [Hossain] so that he can play for Abahani in the Dhaka Premier League. It really hurts me. When someone asks question about my national interest than it’s really irritating for me. I will always prefer Bangladesh than Abahani or any other thing. If Mosaddek and Abahani issue becomes the main reason why Bangladesh lost the Test series, then it becomes really frustrating.
“So I am saying, media sometimes establishes some certain issues. That’s not right. People need to understand. Whatever the plan is, if players don’t execute it on the field then all those plans become useless. In a pressure situation even a world class batsman can make mistake. But nobody wants to believe it. People think that we are the world champion and we will win everything. But reality is different,” Sujon explained.
Sujon believes Bangladesh lost the Test series because players did not play well and failed to execute the plan on the field. Preparing turning wickets against Sri Lanka should not be used as an excuse, admitted Sujon.
“Anyways, I may become emotional. I had hope that we would win the tri-series and Test series. We started well and should have won. But I didn’t want to give any excuse. Wicket is definitely not an excuse. Sri Lanka also played on similar wicket. Roshen Silva, who played a few matches in Test cricket, batted well on the same pitch. Then how can he become successful, whereas our batsmen failed?” said Sujon.
“We knew what kind of wicket will be prepared. Sri Lanka are not God. They have batsmen like Kusal Mendis and Dhananjaya de Silva. Although we missed Shakib al Hasan, still we had a good bowling line-up.
“We selected [Abdur] Razzak, who recently took 500 first-class wickets. Taijul Islam played plenty of Tests. Mehedi Hasan Miraz took 19 wickets against England. How can we say we had inexperienced bowling attack? We should admit that our players did not play well, rather than blaming the wicket.”
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