5 reasons why Sourav Ganguly should be the next Bangladesh coach
With the departure of Chandika Haturusingha with just over a year to go for the World Cup in 2019, Bangladesh find themselves in a bit of a quandary. After a terrible outing in South Africa, where they failed to win even one game, it became apparent that a change in direction was needed.
This was not only due to Bangladesh’s performance in Africa, but also the coach’s strained relationship with the senior players of the team. There were reports of a conflict between the Sri Lankan coach Hathurusingha and Mashrafe Mortaza, which led the latter to step down from captaincy in the T20Is.
Players like Shahriar Nafees, meanwhile, have also been overlooked despite being in supreme form in the first-class circuit. It had been reported that Hathurusinghe didn’t watch a single first-class game during his time as the coach of the Bangladesh national team – a shocking revelation, if true.
With the Sri Lankan now away from the team, Bangladesh are looking for a replacement – and they should try their best to lure Sourav Ganguly to the land of the green.
And here are 5 reasons why...
#1 The Bengali connection
One of the first things every foreign coach has to face when taking charge of the Tigers is the language barrier. While most of the players in the team knows English, some of the younger ones find the language inscrutable.
As a result, there is always a barrier that needs to be overcome with the help of a translator. While translating an instruction works just fine, some of the information is almost always lost in it. This is where the presence of Ganguly would be so useful.
The West Bengal native’s first language is Bangla and will not have any problems in communicating with the players. If anything, his ability to speak Bangla will only make the players keener to listen to him and carry out the tasks he instructs them to do.
Nothing will be lost in translation and, on top of that, the players will not be hesitant to ask him anything because they don’t have to approach a translator first and will go straight to him if they have any queries.