Litton makes the right point at the wrong time

To this day, India winning the 1983 World Cup is considered one of the biggest upsets in international cricket, and the man credited the most for this triumph is the Indian captain Kapil Dev.

But before the tournament, the Indian selectors were hesitant about handing Kapil the captaincy. The reason – the all-rounder’s broken English.

They feared that Kapil would struggle to communicate with the media in England, and create a poor impression.

When Kapil got to know about it, he famously retorted, “Call someone from Oxford, he’ll speak in English, and I’ll play cricket.”

The point of bringing up this incident is not to ridicule the Indian selectors for almost sacking Kapil from captaincy for non-cricketing reasons but to show that even four decades ago, cricketing authorities put great emphasis on how their captains presented themselves in front of the media.

A captain leads the team on the field and is also the chief representative of the group off it. Win or lose, it is the captain who has to face the music in front of the press at the end of the day and how they convey their thoughts matter greatly.

In most top cricketing nations, players get media training from an early age. They are taught how to interact with the media, what to say, how to say it, and most importantly, what to leave out.

But in Bangladesh, cricketers are hardly media trained, which becomes apparent by the way the captains conduct themselves during press conferences.

Most Bangladesh captains play it safe during press conferences, regurgitate the age-old sayings, utter a lot of words without actually adding anything new.

Current T20I captain Litton Das, however, is not one of them.

Last November, he had openly accused the then chief selector Gazi Ashraf Hossain of ousting Shamim Hossain from the Bangladesh T20I squad for the Ireland series without his consent.

A few months before that, Litton had blasted Shamim in a post-match press conference after a defeat against West Indies for not batting more responsibly.

On Saturday, after the six-wicket defeat against New Zealand in Mirpur, the wicketkeeper-batter took shots at his lower-order batters, even naming the players who according to him are not doing enough with the bat.

“In modern T20 cricket, you cannot rely only on the top order. When they fail, the lower order must take responsibility. There was an opportunity today [Saturday], but again it did not happen,” Litton said at the press conference.

“Rishad [Hossain], Mahedi and Nasum [Ahmed] are playing as spinners. All over the world, those who play as spinners can bat… Mahedi can bat, but we need his performances [with bat] in international cricket, same with Rishad and Nasum.

“As all-rounders, we have [Mohammad] Saifuddin and [Abdul Gaffar] Saqlain, along with [Tanzim] Sakib, and we expect some batting from them because there will be games like this where we need our lower order to fire,” he added.

The problem Litton pointed out is valid, Bangladesh do need more firepower from the lower order to do better in T20Is.

However, he said this after his side got bundled for a mere 102 in a rain-affected 15-over-a-side contest against a second-string New Zealand attack.

After such a poor batting performance, focusing only on the batting failures of players who are primarily in the team for their bowling prowess is irrational.

Litton could’ve reserved his scathing criticism for some other defeat, or used a softer tone. But by naming individuals, he is putting undue pressure on those players.

For months, Shamim had to field questions from the media after Litton’s outburst last year. The same is likely to happen for the players he called out on Saturday.

A captain is supposed to shield his players, not use them as shields during tough moments, it’s time Litton realized that.