Coach Steve Rhodes is not oblivious to Bangladesh batsman Soumya Sarkar’s abilities with the bat but reckons that his versatility may be the reason why Soumya does not have a fixed position in the batting order.
The left-hander’s bat has not smiled this BPL and he was in fact dropped for the crucial match against Dhaka Dynamites which his side Rajshahi won by 20 runs. Rhodes believes Soumya to be a player for all formats but was confused about what role the cricketer should emphasise upon.
“I think Soumya is a very good player. You only have to look back to the one-day international in Chittagong against Zimbabwe when he played a very very special innings. He is a player that can play all formats, he can bat in lots of different positions,” Rhodes opined.
“ I think sometimes, being the player that does that, sometimes you don’t quite nail that position,” he continued. Soumya was also handy with the ball recently in domestic circuit and was picked again by the Tigers for the ODI squad.
“ Is he an opener, is he a middle-order player, is he an all-rounder? Those are the questions that still remain maybe unanswered. There is only one guy who can answer that and that’s Soumya to hopefully get some consistency and success regularly in one position. But he’s a very good player to have because of that simple fact that he could do several things,” Rhodes said.
For Rhodes, Soumya not being amongst the runs led to him not featuring in the last match. He opined that the franchises need to win and sometimes that means a foreign star can get the nod ahead of local stars.
“Most of the owners are Bangladeshi and therefore you would think they have a strong interest in playing Bangladeshi players. But having said that they are here to win as well and if it means that some of the foreign stars get a go and Soumya doesn’t, then that’s because maybe Soumya hasn’t scored the runs that they wanted. I can understand it, you can only play so many players and it’s up to Soumya and others to make sure they stay in that team and do well,” he concluded.
