BCB Prepares Unified Coaching Manual

The Bangladesh Cricket Board is finally preparing its very own unified coaching manual in order to develop the country's cricket.Since Bangladesh gained Test status in 2000, Cricket Australia had voluntarily provided training to Bangladesh local coaches and umpires under a five-year agreement that ended in 2006.Thereafter, the BCB renewed the deal for a further two years for 2007-2009, the board had to pay a huge amount of money, triggering a criticism in the sports area.With the second agreement already expired (on paper, but still running on), now Bangladesh have to walk along with its own coaching manual in the coming days and Ashfaq-ul-Islam, deputy education manager of BCB game development, said: "We have now introduced a unified coaching language in Bangladesh. Now if a batsman needs to learn how to play a front foot shot, he can learn it in the same language from different coaches."Meanwhile, Bangladesh had introduced the game education in 2005, and the game education is still going on with the assistance of the Asian Cricket Council and Cricket Australia, which are expected to recall their assistants after completing a couple of courses of the second agreement.Ross Turner, international development programme manager of Cricket Australia, along with Ashfaq presented their last two years' game education activities to reporters at Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Wednesday.Turner claimed that the money (nearly three crore) was worth spending as they have had educated at least 345 umpires and 310 coaches over the last two years.The Australian believes that Bangladesh can continue the follow up of their work and thus they have already provided a coaching manual to the BCB officials.Turner also said that if the former players showed their interest in coaching, cricket of Bangladesh would be benefited as the former players had a clear concept of the game and could be able to provide valuable knowledge to youngsters.He, however, expressed optimism about the future of Bangladesh cricket as former cricketers like Khaled Mahmud, Khaled Mashud are coming forward to take up coaching."Players always have the better chance to become a good coach than others and I am happy that Bangladeshi players are taking interest in it," said Turner."Cricket will not be benefited until the local coaches are being educated and it is a long way to get a good coach," said Ashfaq during the presentation."We are confined to level-2 coaches. We, however, hope to participate in a level-3 coaching programme organised by ACC in the latter part of the year," said the development officer.Ashfaq informed that BCB has appointed as many as 54 educated coaches, of whom 30 coaches have been visiting all 64 districts by rotation to provide unified coaching method.'As an outcome of the programme, we have now our coaches in the age-group teams like U-15, U-17 and U1-9, but once there were foreign coaches appointed,' he added.The BCB officials said they will consider the issue of renewing the agreement with CA when the board of directors meet on May 9.Source: bdnews24.com