THE Bahrain Cricket Federation’s (BCF) new head coach has set himself the goal of trying to improve the national cricket team’s position in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) T20I rankings.
Former Indian first-class cricket stalwart Bhaskar Pillai, who formally assumed charge at the beginning of this month, thinks Bahrain have the potential to move rapidly up the ladder in the global rankings.
“Bahrain are currently 28th in the T20I list and I would like to see them rise up in the rankings,” Pillai, 60, told the GDN in an exclusive interview.
“The more you go up in the list, the more points you get and the funding improves as well.”
The head coach replaced former India spin-bowling all-rounder Aashish Kapoor, who left the post earlier this year after his contract ended to concentrate fully on his commitments with an Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise.
Pillai had a prolific first-class career for Delhi in India’s domestic circuit in the 1980s and 90s, scoring 5,443 runs at an average of 52.84 in 95 matches with 18 hundreds, including a career-best score of 222 not out.
After retiring in 1994-95, he served on a panel of match referees for the domestic game, before taking up coaching, doing a stint at India’s prestigious National Cricket Academy (NCA), working as a batting consultant at the Board of Control of Cricket in India’s (BCCI) specialised academy and also functioning as a scout for new talent.
The BCF contacted Pillai after Kapoor’s departure and requested him to accompany the men’s team, as an interim head coach, to Nepal in April for the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Premier Cup tournament which was eventually won by the hosts, who automatically qualified for the upcoming Asia Cup.
Although Bahrain failed to make the final cut in the one-day international (ODI) tournament, Pillai was sufficiently impressed by how the team of weekend cricketers with day jobs acquitted themselves and had no hesitation in accepting when he was offered a year-long contract by the BCF.
“Bahrain have been playing T20Is regularly but not too much ODI cricket but, even then, they put up a really good show,” he said. “The two formats are quite different from each other in terms of work-load and tempo and, even though the other teams had much more ODI experience, the kingdom’s team did pretty well, I thought.”
In the two weeks that he has been here, Pillai has already been supervising training sessions for all the different teams – the men’s side, the women’s team, the different age-group squads – and is quite enthused by what he has witnessed.
“I’m quite impressed by the kind of talent I’ve seen here,” Pillai said. “We have some very good cricketers in the men’s senior team and I’ve spotted some outstanding players in the age-level categories.
“I’m also helping out with the women’s teams and U19 and U16 sides for both genders and there’s a lot of promise for the future.”
But, in order for the sport to progress and grow in the kingdom, Pillai added, infrastructure development and building large pools of players for both the men’s and women’s teams is crucially important.
“The obvious, and most important, requirement is a proper cricket ground, a stadium, with all the requisite facilities,” he explained.
“Right now, our cricketers play on artificial pitches and sandy outfields which puts them at a disadvantage when they come up against other teams who have multiple grounds and state-of-the-art facilities at their disposal.
“Then, we need to increase our players’ pools. Our men’s team pool, for example, has about 20-25 quality players. Ideally, that should number between 50 to 60.
“It should be the same for the women’s pool as well as the age-level teams.”
Additionally, Pillai said, the game needed involvement from more local players if it was to grow as rapidly as envisaged.
“Right now, all the players in all our teams are expats,” he said. “In order for cricket to grow and expand in Bahrain, it needs to take hold in local communities, interest Bahrainis into taking it up.”
The BCF was taking steps now to ensure exactly that, Pillai added.
“I’ve been talking to the federation about the need for more local players to be attracted to the sport,” he explained. “And the BCF is taking some very proactive measures to develop the game – they’re thinking of promoting it in schools, for example.
“Once more locals start playing cricket, the whole situation will change: it’ll grow and evolve more quickly, more organically.
“The BCF is also taking steps towards the development of a proper cricket stadium along with all the facilities that cricketers would need. So, once that comes into play, the entire complexion of the sport in this country will change.”
Right now, though, Pillai said, he was focused on an immediate task: the creation of larger player pools than at present.
“More players knocking on the door of every one of our teams will create healthy competition,” he continued. “There will be battles for every slot and the players will have to guard against complacency because a drop in performance by one player could see them replaced promptly by someone.
“And, again, as I said before, it will be difficult to create a larger pool without the involvement of local players.
“But that will come with time. For now, with several men’s competitions coming up over the next few months, I’m looking forward to a fruitful first season with the boys.”
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