The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has suspended the Men's Head Coach Chandika Hathurusinghe on disciplinary grounds. With this suspension of 48 hours, he will be terminated immediately as well. Former West Indies Cricketer Phil Simons has been announced as interim coach till the ICC Champions Trophy 2025.

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Hathurusinghe returned for his second stint as Bangladesh coach in February last year. His first stint as the coach was from 2014 to 2017. BCB president Faruque Ahmed said, "Hathurusinghe is facing two misconduct charges. One is for assaulting a player, and the other is for taking more leave than allowed in his contract."

Chandika Hathurusinghe's Second Stint as Men's Head Coach

Bangladesh team had underwhelming performances under Hathurusinghe in the 2023 ODI World Cup and 2024 T20 World Cup where they failed to win a single game in the Super 8 stage. Bangladesh's T20 World Cup performance was also sub-par, with many questioning Hathurusinghe's decision-making in the Super Eight game against Afghanistan. Well as compared to his first stint as the head coach which was better as the national team improved a lot, especially in white-ball cricket, with a strong performance in the 2017 Champions Trophy, earning automatic qualification for the 2019 ODI World Cup.

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BCB President Faruque Ahmed On Chandika Hathurusinghe

In his first press conference as BCB President, Ahmed said "Chandika Hathurusinghe should no longer continue as the head coach." He further added, "It was a real blunder to bring back Hathurusinghe for a second stint. He had left us in trouble the last time he left the job [in 2017]. Bangladesh was a stepping stone for him. He went back to his country and became their head coach. I couldn't believe that a 25-member board of directors, including the president, could make such a decision. I hope they are realising their mistake. Those who brought him back thought that he was a magician. They thought that only Hathurusinghe created this bubble of success. Cricket is not about magic. Bangladesh's success is due to a combination of players, coaches, selection committee, and even board officials."

His best achievement was the 2-0 Test series victory over Pakistan this year. It was their maiden win in Pakistan, and first overseas Test series win in 15 years. Their India tour ended in disappointment as they were whitewashed in Tests as well as T20Is by a bigger margin.

Phil Simmons first assignment as an interim coach would be a two-match Test series at home against South Africa this month. Followed by the clashes against West Indies, UAE, and ICC Champions Trophy 2025.

Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha shared on Friday that they are trying to prepare their best for the forthcoming T20 World Cup as there are a lot of unknown factors to them. Moreover, due to the unpredictability factor especially in the United States, they have decided to put some more grass on the surface in the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium in the ongoing three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka as well.

However, Bangladesh are scheduled to play against Sri Lanka in Dallas on June 7 and South Africa on June 10 while the next two group phase matches will take place in the West Indies.

“What we are looking at is the combination for World Cup, how the individuals fit in and understanding the game plan and be comfortable. The other thing I mentioned is that we want to play on good wickets because we don’t know what we get in America and we play two very important games in America and nobody has any clue because there is not much data behind it,” Hathurusingha said reporters before the series-deciding third match on Friday.

Chandika Hathurusingha shares his views about World Cup preparation

“What I understand is that New York has a drop-in wicket prepared on Adelaide and they are going to drop in there hopefully expectation is something similar to what Australian pitches are. There’s little feedback from NSW Cricket about Dallas. Washington Freedom played there. I spoke to their GM when I was in Australia. Our recollection from St Vincent is the last Test we played there. So we are preparing as well as we can for these unknown factors,” he again said.

However, he added that playing on good wickets is also helping their bowling department to prepare well as they are now learning to bowl with a different approach as well.

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“One thing we realized is that we are playing in different kind of pitches now and in this series there is more grass and more carry and we want to play on wickets that are conducive to high scoring to get us understand what is acceptable and what areas we need to improve in bowling because it’s a mindset shift as well because when you are bowling on certain wickets 150 as a winning score. You expect to bowl in a certain way and if you bowl in these sort of pitches you are going at eight runs an over it is very good. 160 you saw the other day was not a par score and even 200 after losing four wickets in power play we nearly got there and we really need to understand those factors as well so I am pretty pleased with the way our bowling unit is shaping up,” he explained.

However, ahead of the final T20I, Hathurusingha said that he is impressed with the way the team came back after the defeat in the opening game. He also said that both Soumya Sarkar and Litton Das admitted that they had made mistakes in the first game but returned with a bang in the following game with a 63-run stand.

“You are talking about the last game I thought we almost played a perfect game. Pleasing thing for me is how we quickly learnt from the first game,” he said. “Both of them put their hands up after the first game that their approach was wrong and they will work on it and played good cricket. I am old enough to understand that people make mistakes. Look at the start we got, 63 [in Powerplay]. T20 is amazing. As long as they are playing for the team and contributing for the team, that’s what we want.”

Chandika Hathurusingha also said that he is impressed with Jaker Ali and Mahmudullah while Shoriful Islam is also trying his best to become a leading bowler for them as well.

“Every game he is growing into a leading bowler for us” – Chandika Hathurusingha on Shoriful Islam

“He( Mahmudullah) brings a lot of experience. He played the BPL with a lot of maturity. He is playing with a lot of freedom which I said in a previous interview. When I saw him in the World Cup, he is so much at-ease with his game and himself. He is playing beautifully now,” he stated. “It is very refreshing to see what he (Jaker) can do. I only saw him in this BPL. He is very calm which is really nice to see. It is one quality you need from someone who bats at No 5, 6 or 7. Most of the times you have to do certain things with limited time. It was really pleasing to see what he can do. It gave us a lot of confidence as a team.”

“W know that he (Shoriful) had a very good BPL and I think he came up with the same confidence to bowl in these matches as well. What happened was in the first game due to dew, the ball didn’t swing as it did in the BPL and he had to adjust very quickly for the second game so that was very pleasing to see the way he bowled in the second game. Every game he is growing into a leading bowler for us with Taskin and Fizz there is another one we can bank on,” Bangladesh head coach concluded.