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Old June 29, 2009, 01:46 AM
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Nocturnal Nocturnal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Daily Star

Jamie lacks perspective!
Quazi Zulquarnain Islam

While the whole country was busy ranting over Bangladesh's woeful showing in the ICC World T20 one man noticeable by his absence was head coach Jamie Siddons.

However at the press conference on his (early) return from Australia, Siddons was expected to provide a lot of answers to questions that had been building for a while.

For someone who had been away from the hullabaloo, a certain amount of perspective could have been expected.

Instead, his responses left bewildered fans scratching their heads and raised the question about whether Jamie Siddons is missing the bigger picture.

Primarily, Siddons put the blame for the failure squarely on the shoulder of the Future Tours Programme (FTP) lamenting the lack of match practice prior to the tournament.

However he conveniently chose to forget that it was for this very reason that Bangladesh became the first team to set foot on England. They engaged in a number of extra practice games so as to acclimatise themselves to foreign conditions and gain essential match practice, all of which was geared to winning just one game against Ireland.

Also interestingly, while Siddons stopped short of publicly defending his players he made sure to get the point across that his work was seemingly paying dividends.

The shaven-headed Australian argued, rightfully, that it was impossible to tell a player what to do all the time and that some form of intuitive ability was necessary to catch up with the game.

However, his most worrying comments were directed towards defending his value-addition to the team. As a measure of showcasing his work, Siddons pointed to the fact that Tamim Iqbal's batting was a lot less cavalier, Ashraful was playing a newly acquired cut shot and that Shakib al Hasan's back-lift had improved.

These comments betray Siddons's true standing -- as the head coach of one of a Test playing side. While it may be politically correct to brand this as improvement, the truth of the matter is that it shows a distinctive lack of vision and ability to formulate the bigger picture.

Siddons is the head coach, not a specialist batting or bowling coach. He should be motivated to lead the team and get them playing to the best of their ability. His role is sorting out why Ashraful is still playing suicidal strokes day after day, why Tamim still gets run out in atrocious fashion and why Mashrafe and Rubel continue to bowl length balls at the death.

Siddons' comments paint the picture of a man who is so concerned with micro-management that he has lost sight of the bigger picture. No doubt, as he himself points out, Bangladesh is a very tough side to coach and captain. But come now, the Tigers have been around for a while, and such shambolic showings should be treated with the disdain it deserves, not reassuring pats on the back. After all, Ireland made it to the Super Eight's and they certainly have no more stars than we do.

For Siddons the real trouble seems in not solving the problems but identifying them. His adherence to 'fine-tuning' shows that he is afflicted with tunnel vision and chooses not to focus on the importance of vision and far-sightedness that should be the hallmark of an ambitious coach for an aspirant Test playing nation. But perhaps that is not his fault. Maybe he is just not cut out for it.
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