Language barrier one of biggest challenges: ICC educator Binod

Nepal cricketer and International Cricket Council’s Level-3 coach educator Binod Das admitted on Monday that language barrier remained one of the biggest challenges during the six-day Level-2 coaching course conducted by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium media centre from 15 to 20 July.

When asked about the linguistic challenges faced by the participating coaches, Binod was candid about the reality.

"Communication is a big problem. Especially in our part of the world, South Asia, English is not our first language. And then if you don't have expertise in certain languages, it could act as a barrier," Binod told Daily Sun.

"But I was fortunate enough to understand most of the things that the participants were saying. So it became kind of a guideline for me that they expect this, they are not understanding this, or they have understood certain things in this way. So it was kind of a guideline for me to have that correction. Moving forward, language is one area that we would like to get slightly better at," he added.

Binod also highlighted the importance of effective delivery in coaching.

"And the other thing is the delivery part of it. So these two areas we have addressed with the current group of coaches as well and we have discussed this with the game development department. When we are selecting coaches for a higher level, we need to have certain learning expertise within those coaches as well," he said.

"When you graduate from Level 1 to Level 2, Level 2 to Level 3, you will need a little bit of expertise in that as well. You might not be an expert in English, but you need to understand certain terms that will help you understand the topics better. So that we have already discussed," he added.

Binod also expressed confidence that Bangladesh would produce more high-quality coaches through its growing coach education system.

"Bangladesh has got a very rich cricketing history, but when it comes to coach education and coaching programmes, we are still young at it. You see a lot of Bangladeshi players becoming world-class, but slowly, with the education system in place, we will see many Bangladeshi coaches also getting to that standard. That's the whole reason behind it," he said.

"When I first walked in six days back, I saw a lot of confusion, anxiety and nervousness. But within these six days, I can assure you that there were people who understood what they were lacking and what they needed to get better at," he added.

Binod also stressed the importance of continuing such education programmes.

"I believe that Bangladesh, with the number of players playing cricket and the amount of interest among the youth, needs good coaches to work in all these districts, clubs and everywhere else. Because unless they get to a certain standard, they will not get exposure to standard-level coaching," he said.

"So it's very important for young kids to receive good-quality coaching at the grassroots level. And the BCB game development department is pretty much clear that they want to make it accessible to more coaches in Bangladesh. We are in talks about how often we can run these courses, what modes we can adopt and what information we can take to them," he added.