'It makes no sense to not let your best performer play'

The biggest drama of your cricket career occurred in 1999. What was going through your mind when you found out you were not in the World Cup squad?
I think it was historic not pick a player who made 135 in the trial match prior to the World Cup. They simply dropped me. It was the biggest joke in Bangladesh cricket. I am sure it didn't happen anywhere else in the world. We know what happened next, so we don't need to discuss it now. I think it happened due to personal hatred, which should never be the case in professional sport. It victimises the person and his family.

You made it back after there was a after a national outcry for your return. In the World Cup game against Scotland, Bangladesh were 26 for 5 at one stage when you were at the crease.
My immediate target was to bat till the 40th over come what may. Luckily I had a good stand with Naimur Rahman, and then I told Enamul Haque to just defend. Let's take it to the 40th over and see how much we can add afterwards. The wicket and weather were against us. I had an initial chance but I batted well afterwards. We moved to 185 for 9 from that point, which was only possible because of help from above.

There can be no compromise with experience in the game. My lifetime of work in the Dhaka Premier League really came in handy that day. Experience comes to play when you are facing a negative situation.

You also made a fifty against Australia. Was that a better innings?
It was a great effort against Australia, a dream team at the time. I batted against Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, and you could call it an improvement day-by-day. One of our biggest reasons for batting well was [our coach] Gordon Greenidge. He made sure we batted a lot against bowling machines, which helped us immensely.

A year after the World Cup, Bangladesh played their inaugural Test match. But you never got to play a Test.
I had retired after the 1999 World Cup in a huff, but the board told me later to give them a letter. By that time I had started playing first-class cricket and scored heavily in the first three seasons. I had the opportunity and the experience to play Test cricket, but I think that same personal vendetta worked against me as it had happened in 1999.

At 35, did you think you were fit to play Test cricket?
If the board had said I was unfit, I couldn't have scored a thousand first-class runs in one season. During a Test series against Pakistan, between the first and second Test, I made 200 and 100 in the same first-class game. I couldn't have scored more than 300 runs in a four-day game. So that was also a big question. I couldn't compromise a country's cricket for someone's personality. So I thought that since this country has given so much to me, so much love, I can sacrifice Test cricket. It helped me get over the hurt of not playing Test cricket.

Still, did you feel, as Bangladesh's best batsman at the time you ended your career, that it was unfair not to play Test cricket?
It was unfair. I believe now that as a selector if you are not letting the best performer play, it makes no sense. If I am looking after my personality instead, I am not doing service to my country.

Did you agree with the youth-focused selection policy at the time?
There have been many Test players in Bangladesh who quit cricket soon after playing a few Test matches. There are many Test players who are still under the age of 30 but are long gone. Of course there was blind faith [on youth]. One player was taken ahead of me and he didn't play more than one Test.

Every sport team provides chances to young players slowly so that it builds the team's base. You have to give them time. After we won the ICC Trophy in 1997, we made seven changes within six months. A team's performance is hampered when you make frequent changes.

Minhajul Abedin was the epitome of the Dhaka Premier League. How did you reach those heights?
When we started in the early 1980s, there was hardly any international cricket. So the main goal was to play for the biggest club in the league and be the top scorer.

In my first match in Dhaka, I made 47 against Gulshan Youth while playing for Dhaka Rangers in the second division. The owner, Mr Sentu, told me, "You will one day become the country's best player." It stuck to me, and I never forgot that sentence. I was the highest scorer in every game that season, and in the following year I joined Lalmatia in the First Division. I made 89 against Abahani in a tournament final.

I made a couple more seventies, and I was called up in the senior team for a tour to West Bengal. I was one of the youngest players in the team. There were lots of senior players. I played well in a trial match and I was taken. I didn't get many chances there. While coming back, I told myself that I must play at No. 4 for Bangladesh.

In my second season in the First Division, the 1984 season, I joined Abahani and made 739 runs and since then, I hardly missed out on a place among the top five run-getters each Dhaka Premier League season until I retired.

You were the lynchpin of most Abahani-Mohammedan matches, considered the Dhaka derby and a battle that has been so important to Bangladesh cricket.
Again, due to the lack of international cricket in the 1980s, the Abahani-Mohammedan game was the biggest cricket match in the country. There were two other teams - Bangladesh Biman and Brothers Union, so I used to target big scores against these teams mainly. There was pressure from the supporters, of course.

We didn't have a lot of training facilities, so we used to do fitness work with the football teams. We hardly had net bowlers or other facilities, but we had to make sure of full fitness in these big games. By the time the season was over, every player wanted to be in demand for the next season.

I spent nearly 16 years with Mohammedan and six years in Abahani, in which we were league champions each time, and then we made a "dream team" in Surjo Tarun for a couple of years.

Paint us a picture of an Abahani-Mohammedan clash from the 1980s and 1990s.
I will tell you my first experience. In 1984 when I was playing for Abahani against Mohammedan, it was my first derby. I took a rickshaw from Rajarbagh to Bangabandhu National Stadium [about 4km)] at around seven in the morning. I saw a line near the Purbani hotel [around 3km from the stadium], and it kept going towards the stadium. I thought it was a political rally, but in truth it was the fans waiting to get in to the stadium. I was the Man-of-the-Match in that game, which was a tournament final. I made 59 out of 139, but we bowled them out for 87.

Before the match, the pressure reached dangerous levels from the supporters. They would stone us at training if the club didn't hire a foreign player ahead of the big game. They would ask us: where is the foreign player? If we were on the losing side, we wouldn't get out of the dressing room before 8pm [three hours after the scheduled end]. So we always played with this pressure, discussed it in the team meetings. We knew that to get the abuse off our back, we had to perform and win. And it wasn't just at the ground or at training. We used to be hounded in the bazaars, abused regularly until we won the derby, whichever side I played for.

Mohammedan club officials were nice enough not to be mean to us after we lost these big games. The senior players used to be in the forefront of all discussions during those days. I learned a lot from them. I learned how to handle supporters. There was some misbehaviour from supporters. Still, we feel that we spent a great time during those days, a large part of my career.

It was always a full stadium, especially in the BNS, which was regularly 40 to 50,000 people. Nowadays we don't even see 100 people in Mirpur. We see big crowds in international matches, but no more in domestic games.

How did you get interested in cricket? Tell us about your early days in Chittagong.
We had two clubs in Chittagong - Abedin Colony Club and Town Club. They took part in all the major sports in the top division. These clubs were created by my father. He was martyred in the 1971 Liberation War. His last innings was a century for East Pakistan in a three-day match. We have a paper clipping of the next day's report. He organised these clubs and most of my family members played. This is where I started my career.

Did you consider it a risk to come to Dhaka from Chittagong in the early 1980s, when cricket wasn't really big?
I came to Dhaka to play cricket and also football for Muktijoddha. I never thought of it as a risk to my life or career, mainly because my family wasn't dependent on my earnings. I could do my own job and not really worry about making money.

In 1986 you were picked in the country's first ODI team.
We played the game in Morutuwa. We had a lot of senior players there. We didn't have any international exposure but we had a tour to Pakistan just prior to this ODI tournament, which really helped us get our eye in, so to say. It was something to remember. We were a team without facilities, but we went to play an ODI. I consider it a great experience.

You were also Bangladesh's mainstay in the ICC Trophy.
I think our best team was in the 1990 tournament in the Netherlands. We were beaten in the semi-final by Zimbabwe. We had a chance to avoid them but we missed that opportunity; it was a calculation error on our part in the group stage. We made 15 runs fewer in a game against the home side.

We reduced Zimbabwe, a strong side in those days, to 130-odd for 6 but they went on to make 200-plus. Dave Houghton made 91. But these things happen in cricket, and we couldn't go past them. The team had a great combination of batting and bowling. Players had technique, temperament and experience, unmatched by most of our teams in the pre-Test era.

How did you become such a consistent domestic batsman?
I think we were mentally very strong, leaving aside practice facilities. I feel my thinking and understanding of the game was quite progressive. When I came into coaching, I saw that a lot of things that I had done in my playing career are being introduced in Level 3 and 4 coaching. But we did a lot of work without much knowledge of actual factors. I think this was god-gifted, and we could use it in the right time.

Wherever we went to play, we discussed matters with senior players. I met Javed Miandad in 1986 at a party. We asked him about technique, what is the best technique? He said: "There is no good technique in the world. The best you can do is to play straight. Don't let the ball go past you." I always kept that in mind.

Do you share your batting experience with the current generation?
Batting came naturally to me as did the understanding the situation. I have always tried to share when I am a coach and selector. One has to know the right time and place to utilise one's talent.

Now that you are a selector, do you feel Bangladeshis demand too many changes too quickly?
You cannot judge a player after one or two games, even at the top level. There's no compromise on experience and fitness. Everyone has to look at the best performer first. See the difference between domestic and international performance. I have to look whether there is a major change in a player who goes from domestic to international, and also vice versa. I wouldn't want any player to go through what I had gone through. I never took sides when I played, and now that I am a selector, I always look for someone who is good for the long-run, a stable performer.