Toilet to the rescue
If Toilet: Ek Prem Katha was remade in Bangladesh, it would have to be called “Toilet: Cricket’s Homestead”. Unlike the Bollywood movie in which India’s cultural trouble with toilets is highlighted, the toilet has become the focal point of 15 young girls from Bogura and their cricketing dreams.
The toilet in question, situated inside Bogra’s Shaheed Chandu Stadium, is about 35-40 square-feet. It is similar to toilets usually seen in sporting venues - it has three separate stalls, couple of wash-basins, mirrors and water taps. But if you enter this particular toilet, it is hard to realise that it is actually a toilet. It is full of cricket equipments like bats, balls, stumps, nets and pads. The commodes are being used as “tables” to keep these things. A flower vase adorns the flush box while pictures of cricketers hang on the wall. The basin is filled with cricket balls.
As you scan through the room, there’s a message written on one side: “Change your views, it will change your life”.
It was Muslim Uddin’s idea to convert a toilet into a cricket room. Muslim, an assistant coach of the Bogra District Sports Association, was put in charge of women’s cricket in 2007 by the region’s women’s sporting association. When after a few months the women’s authority moved away from cricket, he didn’t give up on Bogura’s young women who wanted to keep playing. There was a period in the middle of couple of years when Muslim had been out of his job at the Bogura Sports Association but he kept going, producing players like Khadiza Tul Kubra, Ritu Moni and Sharmin Akhter.
The trouble he faced was mostly with storing the equipments. He also felt that there should be a place where the girls can socialise when they arrive for training. But whenever they find a place in the stadium, they get displaced for one reason or the other. Without seeing a way out of this problem, Muslim simply asked the sports association, in charge of running the Shaheed Chandu Stadium, for the toilet. He thought, whatever it is, they are not going to take away the toilet.
“We had another room which we had to give up. I asked for this toilet as it wasn’t being used. My players and I really did a good job organising this room. We have keeping our things here for the last three years,” said Muslim.
Brishti, one of Muslim’s students, said, “We don’t think of this as a toilet. Sir said this is our address. Since then it has become our little world. We don’t want to be removed from here. We want to stay here.”
Muslim hasn’t stopped at just converting the toilet into women’s cricket’s little office room. He has even made himself some training essentials, things that are bought from high-end shops or even imported from abroad when used by the national team or other domestic sides.
While showing a bat particularly used for wicketkeeping drills, Muslim said, “I am quite certain that my things can do 70 per cent of the job that is done by those imported ones.”
But he hasn’t been able to replicate a bowling machine, which he feels will really help his students.
Habibul Bashar, the Bangladesh selector who was on-duty in Bogra during a BCL first-class match, was impressed with Muslim’s ingenuity.
“What he has so thoughtfully produced is very useful. I am surprised to see that these can be made locally. I don’t see much of a difference between what he has made and what the international teams even use,” said Bashar, also a former Bangladesh captain.
While heading out of the girls’ small world, the eyes met that message, “Change your views, it will change your life”. Whether it is Bollywood’s Toilet or the one in Shaheed Chandu Stadium, the message is fitting.
Translated by: Mohammad Isam of Cricinfo