Home ›› 13 Dec 2021 ›› Sport
Former Sri Lankan Cricketer turned coach Naveed Nawaz was appointed as the head coach for Bangladesh U-19 cricket team on July 2018 and under his mentorship the young Tigers lifted the trophy of the ICC U-19 World Cup 2020 in South Africa.
Success gets him a contract extension and now Naveed will be heading towards his second U-19 World Cup as the coach of Bangladesh team, this time expectations are high and the preparation was inadequate due to pandemic situation.
Naveed spoke to the reporters on Sunday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium where he expressed his thoughts about the team which will be heading to the UAE to take part in the ACC U-19 Asia cup and later to the ICC U-19 World Cup 2022, slated to take place at the West Indies,
Here are some of the excerpts of the conversation
How is the preparation this time?
Naveed: Although back of our mind, we know what kind of standards that you require to behind do well in the U 19 world cup, so that’s the same thing that we have been doing building the player base for the last one year. So before thinking about winning a world cup, you need to understand what skills you need to go and do well in a world cup and building those skills in the preparation stage. So that’s what we’ve been doing the last one year, building the player strength, building the players who can go and perform well and also looking at the venue of the world cup, the combination becomes very important. So, we’ve been building that team combination with the sort of players who can perform in the conditions in West Indies as well. So, I hope that when we go to the West Indies, it all depends on how you perform on the day. So, all I’m looking at is 11 people contributing in a game, and we have more contributors in a game, and if we play well on that day, we can definitely be on the top of things, so that’s the plan. It’s very difficult to go to a world cup, thinking that you’re going to win it If you don’t have your preparation and back up to do well in, so that’s how I plan it.”
How different is this team from the team that won the World Cup?
Naveed: “It’s a totally different two units, but if you look at our last year’s group like we had, we actually built within two years a very strong betting unit and the bowlers, we had a very strong bowling unit as well, but we didn’t have many all-rounders. We had only Shamim (Hossain) Patwari who was an all-rounder. He was the sole all-rounder in the whole group, but if you look at this year’s group, we do have a strong batting unit but less experience, and because of the pandemic, their game has been reduced for one year. So, these are the downside of the pandemic that we are facing right now. But also, we have the advantage that we also have a very good bowling unit and a couple of all-rounders who could also bowl but they are in the team as a batsman. so that’s a massive advantage to have like plenty of bowling options in your batting unit. So that’s very easy when it comes to selections and things like when you’re making team combination that becomes a huge advantage. So, the strengths are the difference between the two teams.”
How do you see the inclusion of Rakibul Hasan and Tanzim Hasan Sakib, the two cricketers from the past edition in this team?
Naveed: `It’s a good advantage for us to have two seasoned players in our squad, and also these two boys have been there in the last two years. And they know exactly what they did in the last two years, which brought us success. So, the good thing about it is that they can inspire the younger players in the group and they can also contribute to planning, and they know what’s happening in the last two years. So, they can also create like a leadership group and help the team to sort of growing together.
How badly the covid situation hampered the preparation for the upcoming ICC U-19 World Cup?
Naveed: I think. Yeah, we lost the whole year of 2020, as well as half of 2021 due to the pandemic. So, our preparation was very short and brief this year. We didn’t have much time in camps. We didn’t have much to us as well, but I think BCB has done well to organize the three series that we already played with prior to the Asia Cup. So, we have done Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and India, which was very good, like we most of our boys have played at least between 12 to 15 youth ODIs by this time, and by the time they finish the Asia Cup, we’ll have some other boys with a with a 20-game experience in youth internationals. So that’s all we could do with the current situation. I hope it’s going to be the same thing for every other country as so. So, it’s the same for everyone. so, I’m not much worried about that, but we are still thinking about what best we can utilize the time and the programs available to make sure that the players reached the expected benchmarks.”
Objectives for the upcoming World Cup?
Naveed: There are two goals when you look at playing a U 19 World Cup. So, the main goal would be a long-term goal of producing players for Bangladesh cricket. So that’s the main goal of any cricket board who’s selecting a U 19 team and obviously, the second goal is to try to bring a World Cup, so that’s a short-term goal we are looking at.
So we are trying to keep eyes open to look at the bigger feature as well as the immediate goals that are required.”
Few cricketers from the U-19 team have already made it to the national team but not all of them are living up to the expectations…
Naveed: it is a transition between under 19th cricket or even domestic cricket in Bangladesh into the into international cricket. So, at the moment, we all know the gap between these two levels of cricket is huge, right? So obviously, when you don’t have a very strong domestic competition, you have to expect the players who get promoted from domestic cricket to international cricket to fail in a couple of games because they are not ready to face that type of competition. But also on the other hand, If you look at player’s, who got enough skill to succeed in international cricket, then the selectors will have to have some sort of patients with these players, allow them to play international cricket till that standard, and I’m sure that will give the players enough pushing to get themselves ready in an in a six months or a year’s time they will be ready players to play international cricket.
How was the triangular tournament in India and what have your learned from that event?
Naveed: Nothing specific as much, but we got a lot of compliments about our boys in India while we were in Kolkata. They were very much impressed about the cricket brand of cricket that we played and our team that it’s a common thing that everyone said was that the team looked like a very well-planned unit, our bowling, and our betting and our strategically. It’s a perfect execution during the series, so that is something that we have been working on with these boys for a long time, and it’s always a hit-and-miss case where we try to do something, and we don’t get 100 percent result out of there. But it’s good to see that we are more or less going towards the target, although it’s not 100 percent, at least a 70 or 80 percent success rate at this rate would be happy to pick.
