Grant Flower steps down as Rangpur Rangers coach in the BPL
Grant Flower has relinquished his position as the head coach of Rangpur Rangers to pursue his career as the batting consultant of the Sri Lanka team. New Zealand's Mark O'Donnell has been named as his replacement who has the experience of coaching in the Abu Dhabi T10 league and T20s as well.
With the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) just days away from the kick-off of its seventh edition, Rangpur Rangers have been forced to replace their head coach. Rangers, a BPL club, have named Mark O'Donnell has been named as the replacement of Grant Flower, who stepped down from the role.
Flower pulled out of the BPL after he played a crucial role in putting the Rangers team together during the draft after he was offered the position of batting consultant for the Sri Lanka side.
"Grant Flower was our coach of Rangpur. At that point of time, he said that he is trying to see if there is any opportunity as a batting consultant and if it happens he will go there. He has signed as the batting consultant of Sri Lanka for two years," Cricbuzz quoted Rangers director Akram Khan.
"He said sorry and informed that it was a good opportunity for him [to be the batting consultant of Sri Lanka]. I said that it would be better for him to work for two years instead of coming here for one month. We had separated ways mutually and later we had confirmed Mark O' Donnell as our head coach."
O'Donnell has the experience of servingĀ Auckland as a coachĀ and having coached in T20s as well as in Abu Dhabi T10 League. Akram said the only other foreign member of the staff will be the video analyst - Shrinivas Chandrasekaran, the analyst from India who also plies his trade for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL as well as the Bangladesh national side.
"Locals will assist Mark. We will have foreign analyst in Shrinivaas Chandrasekaran. Our assistant coach will be Babul while we are trying to rope Mohammad Rafique as our bowling coach,'' he concluded.