Comprehensive plan underway to bring all teams back on track

ABU TALHA SARKAR, Dhaka: Comprehensive plan underway to bring all teams back on track

National cricket’s governing body Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has devised a comprehensive mechanism to gradually bring all the teams from men’s and women’s wings back on field one by one following recent fall in coronavirus cases.

As part of its mechanism, Games Development (GD) of the BCB will call up its Bangladesh Under-19 Cricket outfit for a week-long training camp ahead of their away series against its Afghanistan counterparts.

Young Tigers are scheduled to fly to Dehradun of India on March 10 to play the international series against its Asian rivals. The bilateral series comprises a five-match one-day youth series along with a four-day match.

The series the young Tigers will play in Uttarakhand in March will be first overseas tour for them after over 11-month of protracted corona-enforced layoff.

Afghanistan set their base-camp in the winter capital of Uttarakhand, near the Himalayan foothills in the consent and direct support of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to smoothly run their cricket team regardless of the national, ‘A’ team, Emerging team and age-level cricket teams.

Using the foreign venues – especially the ones from India, Afghans have recorded huge progress and development while establishing them as a rising force in Asian cricket.

As of now, the top-notch teams have to think twice to beat them on the cricket field or have to give a tough fight to beat them especially in the shorter version of the game.

The GD sources say the youth Tigers earlier held an 84-day practice at different venues – Cox’s Bazar, Chattogram, Sylhet and Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Prothisthan (BKSP) – across the country amid concern over Covid-19 since August, 2020.

Of these, the young Tigers held a seven-week training camp at the BKSP, two weeks in Sylhet, one week in Chattogram and two weeks in Cox’s Bazar venues of Sheikh Kamal International Cricket Stadium and its Academy Ground beside the world’s largest sea beach.

This time, the GD will recall a total of 22 players to have practised at the BCB-National Cricket Academy (NCA) ground of the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium (SBNCS) in Mirpur under the supervision of Head Coach Naveed Nawaz, fitness trainer Richard Stainer along with local coaching staff like Talha Jubair, Mehrab Hossain Opi and Mohammad Selim.

AEM Kawser, senior national manager of the BCB-Games Development, admitted to the fact and said they were trying to arrange a series for their young Tigers ahead of the 2022 ICC Under19 Cricket World Cup, but could not manage because of the pandemic.

“We have been communicating with different cricket boards for so long to arrange a series for the young Tigers. We were keeping in touch with them,” he noted.

“We finally managed to rope in Afghanistan, who will host us in Dehradun of India, where they set up their base to run their cricketing activities. We will fly to Dehradun on March 10 if everything is okay,” Kawser told The Independent.