Mohammad Salahuddin wants to leave his mark on Bangladesh cricket in what will be a short stint as the team’s senior assistant coach. The appointment – his second, he had served from 2006 to 2010 as assistant coach too – is till the Champions Trophy next year, but he comes with a big reputation, having built one of the most impressive coaching CVs in the domestic circuit.
Salahuddin, who won the BPL four times with Comilla Victorians, has already started working with the Test cricketers in Dhaka while the team is in Sharjah for the ODIs against Afghanistan. He will travel for the Caribbean with the Test players on Monday.
“I think this is the right time [to work in the Bangladesh team],” Salahuddin said. “I might not be in coaching for much longer, maybe another four or five years. It will be great to help more generations of cricketers in my long coaching career – it won’t be right if I just know everything but can’t light a lamp. If I can do this job properly, it will be helpful for the team. If I can have even a minimum impact, it will be worth it, despite how much time I have till the Champions Trophy. I may not be able to cause dramatic change, but if something I say can cause a change, I will be happy.”
Salahuddin said that he hadn’t talked in detail with head coach Phil Simmons, who was appointed in mid-October on an interim basis after Chandika Hathurusinghe was sacked.
“I have to understand the philosophy of the head coach, how he wants to run the team. I have to help him. I just hope our boys get a bit more confident. I will also keep an eye on their communication with the foreign coaches”
Mohammad Salahuddin
“I might have a different role this time. I have to understand the philosophy of the head coach, how he wants to run the team,” Salahuddin said. “I have to help him. I just hope our boys get a bit more confident. I will also keep an eye on their communication with the foreign coaches.”
Salahuddin was on the verge of being appointed as the team’s batting consultant in 2017 only for the BCB to call it off at the last minute. It soured relations between Salahuddin and the BCB for several years, and Salahuddin being one of the foremost critical voices in Bangladesh cricket didn’t help mend fences.
When the country’s political regime changed in August, the BCB chose as president Faruque Ahmed, who committed to bringing in a Bangladeshi in the coaching setup.
Salahuddin said that his long discussion with Faruque convinced him to wind down his coaching commitments elsewhere. “I asked for a bit of time. I was involved in a couple of places, so I needed a bit of time to leave those places. I have been speaking to Faruque bhai for three months, so it gave me time to settle those commitments.”
Shakib Al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal, among others, both benefitted from their association with Salahuddin when he was the assistant coach earlier. He has subsequently played a role in the development of several cricketers as a coach at the domestic level – the likes of Jaker Ali and Mahidul Islam Ankon, who are new in the Bangladesh Test team, among them.
“Please don’t be quick to label someone as a hero or a villain. When a player joins [the national team], they go through many processes and perform consistently to get into the team. They struggle a lot,” Salahuddin said in a message to the media. “In international matches, some players may take a few games to find success, while others succeed right away. At that time, you make them heroes, but if they don’t perform well in a couple of matches, you label them a villain.”
