Much has been said of the coach issue of the Bangladesh
cricket team. After Nazmul Hasan Papon stated that Shakib’s mini-sabbatical
during the South Africa series led to Papon’s departure, the current Sri Lanka boss
has refuted those claims and revealed his reason.
“That's not true at all. Mr. Nazmul Hasan is a very clever,
intelligent guy,” Hathurusingha said.
He then went on to imply that those words may have been to
motivate Shakib al-Hasan, who was made the captain in Tests right after the Sri
Lankan coach’s departure. He also described the BCB chief as “intelligent.”
“He must have used it for some other reason. Maybe that is
done to fire up Shakib. I see that Shakib has been made the captain now. He
must have used that for some reason, reading between the lines. He is very
intelligent in handling things.”
While Nazmul Papon was of the opinion that Hathurusingha’s
decision to quit was based on Bangladesh and its players alone. Hathurusingha
has shed light to the other angle of the story. He claims that his dream was to
always coach the Sri Lanka national team.
However, had he waited until the end of 2019 World Cup to leave Bangladesh and then join Sri Lanka, he would have coach the latter for another 4 years, forcing him to stay
away from his family who live in Australia. As a result, he saw this as the
perfect time to make the switch.
“Firstly, I felt that with Bangladesh, I have taken them to
the best position I could. The other thing is that Sri Lanka Cricket had
approached with the job for about four times.
“Then, I am coming to a stage where I can't stay away from
my family for too long. My dream was to coach Sri Lanka... if I am spending
about three years away from my family coaching Bangladesh and if I want to
spend another four years or so coaching Sri Lanka or another country after
that, I can't do that.
”This is the only time.”
Bangladesh take on Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe for a tri-nation series that commences on the 15th of January. After that, the Tigers will host Sri Lanka for a Test and T20I series that begins from the 31st of January.
Picture credit: Getty Images
