Gordon Greenidge coming as ESPN Commentator

[fwullah]

Newspapers are saying that Gordon Greenidge will be coming to Bangladesh for TV commentary during the West Indies tour of Bangladesh.

We will hopefully learn about some of his past experience as Bangladesh national coach and his thoughts on Bangladesh's test status.

[Sham]

My school team used to practice at the Abahani nets, the one next to Satmasjid Road, I don't know if those nets, actually, there was only one, is still there. Anyway, we were busy practicing before the '97 Nirman when Greenidge decided to pay us a little visit one day and watch us practice. Obviously, everybody dropped what they were doing and ran over to him to get autographs. I was batting at the time and I did the same. Instead of signing our bats or whatever we had, he sent us back saying we shouldn't stop in the middle of practice and to go to him after practice and he'd sign our bats. So, we finished practicing and went and got our autographs. I thought it was great that he didn't want us to interrupt our practice to get his autograph and made us wait till after we were done. There is my little Greenidge anectode.

[Edited on 24-11-2002 by Sham]

[Pundit]

Pity, we don't learn these or bother to learn, from a Bengali !

[rafiq]

hey sham what school did you play for ?

[Sham]

Played for Sunbeams. I was in the first O' Level batch. So I played in class nine, it was the first year that Sunbeams played. We had a very young team obviously, made up of classes 7, 8 and 9. I was supposed to play the next year as well but Nirman got delayed and it was a few weeks before my O'Levels so school didn't let my year play. Anyway, played two matches in 97, won the first pretty easilly and then lost to Wills Little Flower in the second round! Quite a mismatch really, class 7 kids playing against 20 year olds who had clearly graduated a few years before or failed a few years of school.

[rafiq]

i was asking because i had a nephew who played nirman cricket for scholastica around the same time, naveed asif. i think they had one or two BD u-17s on their team at that time although i can't remember who.

[Sham]

Yeah I know Naveed. He was a year above me in Sunbeams up untill class 5 and then of course, he went to Scholastica because Sunbeams only had till 5 then. He is a good cricketer. Actually, the year above Naveed's in Scholastica was a very good year. Had a lot of excellent players, Shaker, Yasser, Tasabbur, Naeem, Rubaiyat to name a few. I think a couple of them went on to play first and second division and Rubaiyet was even named as the stand-by keeper for BD U-19. And yeah, some of them did play for BD U-17. But, as you probably know, especially if you have been reading the letters to the editor on DS for the last couple of weeks, we English medium kids all go abroad after a while so there went their cricketing careers.



[Edited on 24-11-2002 by Sham]

[Orpheus]

Small world ha? Infact, we are all related by the theory "six degrees of separation."

Being an English Medium Student, I don't know how you feel about those dailystar comments (I don't really care because I was neither) but what pisses me is the length of the debate. These ppl got nothing else to do but quarrel over something that has no benefit. If they can't even show simple unity and some broad mindness, then "Baler Bangladesh Banabe." Manush na kheye more, aar ei chagolgula is complaining about the technicality of the term "nation builder." No wonder why all groups break apart in Bangladesh (ex: Ershader Dol). Now let's take this concept to cricket.... yup this is how they Mess up everything....They probably make tosses to select the team at the end.

**by the way, that was just a thought - not a complain** Thank You!

Why isn't my signature showing?? It's pissiong me off

[Edited on 24-11-2002 by Orpheus]

[rafiq]

sham, that's cool that you know naveed. i think he was 12th man on that senior team that was the better one and went deep in the schools championship, etc. Naveed made the first team the next year. He actually is still in Dhaka attending med school, but hasn't played any serious cricket in a while as far as I know.

We must lose a bunch of promising players each year as they go abroad to study. In my school days, i used to hang out with the older shirazi brothers (some of you who are old enough may know them) off the cricket field and sometimes on it (they played, I was usually there as a specialist fielder if you know what I mean, I had no business being on the same field as some of these guys ). They were cousins of the great JS Badshah.

The youngest one, Nazim, was probably Bangladesh's brightest prospect of the time. As a teenager, he scored a lot of runs in that 81 ICC trophy as our opening batsman, I think it was '81. Wow that was 20+ years ago!

Nazim, and later on his brothers, moved to LA not long after that. My point in all this nostalgia is there was not enough incentive for them to stay, unfortunately. I wonder if that has changed much in more recent times.

Nazim is still blazing with the bat, I am happy to see. He leads the pretty competitive Southern California league in runs even at his now ripe old age. Incidentally, that league plays on the only grounds dedicated to cricket in the US from what I read. Here's the link, you can nose around for some insight into what's happening with cricket in the US:

http://www.scalcricket.org/year2002/...ldivision1.asp

Members of this forum may get a kick out of some old bangladesh-india "unofficial test" pictures that feature Nazim as well:

http://www.freightco.com/nazimarc.html

[Sham]

I would really love to see the scorecard of that unofficial Test Match. Any idea where I can find it?