It was quite surprising to see a guy travelling from Sandwip, Chattogam and after a nearly six-hour journey comprising boat and bus ride arriving in Dhaka to attend a cricket coaching class in Mirpur on Friday.

While cricket coaching is turning out to be a viable business in different part of the country it is certainly not the case with Ariful Islam Khaled as his student living in an island located along the southeastern coast of Bangladesh hardly knows that they need to pay money to acquire cricket skills.

“Cricket coaching is a risky profession considering they are not aware that you have to pay to learn the game and I am doing just out of my passion,” Ariful told the Daily Sun after completing his more than a three-hour long class at Master the game with Salahuddin, apparently one of the best coach of the country.

A total of 12 students attended the first workshop for coaches that was organized by PhysioCare Wellness Center that included former women’s national skipper Jahanara Alam among others.

“Cricket coaching can be an option for me in future,” added the right-arm pace bowler who believes these kinds of classes will certainly help to develop.

Salahuddin seemed excited with the prospect of sharing his knowledge among others.

“I have been into coaching for the last 25 years and I feel I have some social responsibility so that the next coaches can be better than me and they can do something good for Bangladesh,” said Salahuddin.

“Whatever I have learnt and the mistake that I have made they should learn from it and move forward and that is the reason this initiative is taken and it was a privilege to share my experience with them,” he said

“It is just the beginning and hopefully it will continue in the coming days,” he added.

Salahuddin added that the pathway for coaches needs to be in a better state considering he feels there are no world class coaches in Bangladesh.

“I think the pathway for coaches should be better considering we did not produce any world class coach so far,” said Salahuddin adding that he does not buy the idea that Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is against promoting local coaches.

“I think we (coaches) are yet to get their confidence and that is our (coaches) failure and along the way we need to develop the standard of our coaching for that we need to have a good education system on the game in place and a proper pathway that would help the coaches going up,” he said.

“We have got couple of international standard cricketers but that is not the case with our coaches but I feel we have the talent and I think if the coach education is good in that case our coaches will be better and to nurture talented cricketers you need to have talented coaches,” he said adding that learning coaching skill does not guarantee success considering along with coaching skill you need to handle different pressure as well, precisely in the national team.

“Coaching in the subcontinent is very difficult because there is a lot of outside pressure and you need to grow the personality to handle those pressures. I think a national team coach’s role does not end in handling 14 cricketers as he has to handle the board and the board president along with the selectors,” he said.

The organizers added that they are eyeing to introduce online coaching workshops in the days as that will be easier for coaches far from Dhaka considering if that was the case more coaches like Ariful could be included in the workshop that is eyeing to develop a very important sector related with the game of cricket.