If Hathurusingha stays, we need to be clear about what we want: Nazmul Abedeen Fahim

Bangladesh's poor World Cup performance may be down to several on-field issues - the batters, the pace unit failing all at once, skipper Shakib Al Hasan being a shadow of himself for most of the tournament, the young guns not firing when needeBangladesh didn't play as a team. But head coach Chandika Hathurusingha, who is known to be the final decision maker without any accountability, can't really avoid the blame either. 

Back in 2017 during his first stint as the coach, Chandika in many ways forced Mashrafe Bin Mortaza to retire from T20I cricket. This time, he advised the management to not pick Tamim Iqbal in the squad for the World Cup. In the World Cup, he chose to constantly shuffle the batting order and it backfired terribly.

Highly regarded local coach Nazmul Abedeen Fahim, who is currently the Chief Cricket Adviser at BKSP, thinks a team is bound to fail when all the decisions and tactics come from only a single person in the team. He spoke to The Business Standard (TBS) in detail regarding the reasons behind Bangladesh's failed World Cup campaign, the role of Hathurusingha and much more.

Bangladesh couldn't play as a team

It was an unsuccessful World Cup for us. The World Cup gives everyone a chance to see how far a team has come since the last tournament four years ago. It also gives the team a chance to show everyone else their ability. But we couldn't show anyone anything. Be it the team's performance, or any individual, we couldn't improve anywhere. Sure, a team can lose, but we failed to show our strength.

We couldn't play as a team in the World Cup. A team can have different players and characters, seniors or juniors, but their eyes are set on a specific goal. Everyone prepares themselves - physically and mentally - after knowing their role to achieve that goal. But we probably couldn't do that before the World Cup. The incidents that happened before the tournament, team selection was a bit late, we weren't sure how this team would line up.

That is why we shuffled our plans so that we could get something better out of it, but it didn't work as well. The players had to go through all these, and Bangladesh couldn't play as a team.

The batting order was shuffled early in the World Cup, but that didn't work and the management didn't try reshuffling the order in the later matches. You can't say the failure was due to that (shuffling batting order). Shuffling the order doesn't necessarily mean it will mess up a batter. If a no.3 batter plays at five, it doesn't mean he will forget how to bat at no.3. It can't be an excuse. 

Off-colour pace attack

It is surprising to see the expectations from our pace attack. It was never like we were one of the best pace units in the world, never. That is our overestimation. Maybe we tell it to motivate our pacers. Do we have a better pace attack than India, Australia or England? No chance. Then why do we blindly say that our pace unit is one of the finest in the world? This is not right.

But it is true, the pacers couldn't bowl according to their ability. Maybe the batting-friendly conditions are a reason behind that. The pacers couldn't figure out what to do on batting-friendly surfaces.

The role of Hathurusingha in the Bangladesh team and the change in coaching staff

See, this is not a school team. A coach may be the chief of a school team because you can't depend on school-going cricketers for everything. You have to take care of them. But a national team coach can't be that of the team. Everyone in the team should have responsibility and accountability among themselves and the ownership sense should be there too. It should never be like the coach making all the decisions and everything. Then there will be no decisions from outside or anyone else in the team. This is never a good environment if that happens. Being creative and innovative is very important here, and that goes for everyone in the team.

If there is only one decision-maker in the team, it will never work. The coach's responsibility is to slowly take himself out of it (decision-making) so that the players can make their own decisions. He can help if anyone needs any help. However, it is important to create an environment where players can make their own decisions.

As far as I know, the whole coaching staff is getting replaced. The pace and the spin bowling coach have already left, I guess. The fielding coach won't probably be there as well. I don't know what the decision will be regarding Hathurusingha. He will probably stay. 

If Hathurusingha stays, we need to be clear about what we want from him and how. We can judge his work in the next T20 World Cup next year. But if we can asses him from time to time, that will be better. We need to find a way for that. And it's really important.

If the board thinks they will give him all the power just like club cricket, they have to remember it's not club cricket. If we want to bring out the best from the players, they have to have a sense of ownership. They have to feel it's their team. We never let them feel that way. We think they are only contracted players, earning money from the board through their work. Providing a sense of ownership is important, we never do that.