Coach Salahuddin brushes off Asian Games facility concerns, wants Bangladesh's second cricket gold

Mohammad Salahuddin, Bangladesh head coach for the Asian Games, has dismissed concerns over accommodation and cricket facilities ahead of the Asian Games in Aichi Nagoya, Japan, insisting his players are ready to adapt to whatever conditions await them at the tournament.

Discussions had emerged among continental cricket boards over the readiness and quality of the venue's facilities, though Japan Cricket Association chief executive Alex Miyaji had separately pushed back against those concerns.

"I don't have any concerns about the accommodation. We will get whatever other athletes from the Games and village are getting," Salahuddin told Cricbuzz.

"We are not thinking that as cricketers we need to stay separately, we think of ourselves as athletes."

The former senior assistant coach of the national side, now head of the BCB High Performance Unit, added that basic provisions were never in question.

"Whatever facilities other athletes get we will get the same. They won't leave us anywhere on the streets and there will be accommodation and food so we are not too worried about this," he said.

Salahuddin explained his focus lay instead on adaptation, with Bangladesh's preparation camp at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium beginning on Sunday.

"We will start our preparation tomorrow. Quite a few boys are in South Africa with the Bangladesh A team and we have many hectic tours lined up ahead of us so we have to keep an eye on their overall fitness," he said.

He also stressed the mental side of preparation given the tournament's unforgiving knockout structure. "We also need to take care of their mindset. Since we played in a different format before this, we will focus on adapting to this format as quickly as possible," he said.

"Rather than thinking about the accommodation, my main concern is on how the boys can play well in the tournament and how quickly we can adapt because it's a knockout competition," he added.

Salahuddin warned against underestimating any opponent given the unpredictable nature of T20 cricket, particularly with Associate nations often more accustomed to the format.

"This is a knockout tournament, and T20 is always anyone's game. Even the other teams cannot be taken lightly, I believe the Associate members mostly play this format, so they actually have some advantage here," he said.

"We often have to adapt between formats. That's why in the T20 format, you can't take anyone lightly, you have to play every match seriously, and you have to play to win every match," he added.

On the likely nature of pitches in Japan, Salahuddin said his side would not use conditions as an excuse regardless of what surfaces they encountered.

"When you play cricket, you have to play on different wickets at different times and so expecting a good wicket every time isn't right. If it's a 120 kind of wicket we have to play accordingly and if it's a 200-run kind of wicket we have to work on it," he said.

Bangladesh's only gold medal at the Asian Games across all sports came in men's cricket at the 2010 edition in Guangzhou, and Salahuddin believes repeating that feat in Aichi Nagoya would carry outsized significance for the entire Bangladeshi delegation travelling to Japan.

"The women's cricket team won a silver in 2010 and we've won maybe one or two silvers in kabaddi. Other than that, we don't have major achievements. A large contingent is travelling from Bangladesh but there are very few events where we can actually win a medal and that's why we are very serious about cricket and we want Bangladesh to win gold," he said.