BCB Plans Residential Camp for National Cricketers

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is planning a residential camp for the national team players who might be part of Bangladesh’s upcoming tour to Sri Lanka.

The tour was originally scheduled to take place in July-August, but due to the Covid-19 situation, the tour was postponed. Both the boards are in discussion to play the series in the coming months. 

Currently, almost all of the national players have been training alone throughout the country under BCB’s health safety protocol.

But a team practice camp is yet to be arranged.

BCB CEO, Nizamuddin Chowdhury, on Monday said that the board is working with Sri Lanka Cricket to finalize the formats and number of matches. They will arrange a residential camp for the team once the tour is settled. 

Chowdhury also said Bangladesh might play three more T20Is with three Test matches. However, the final decision is yet to be made. 

“We are in regular contact with Sri Lanka Cricket. As per the initial discussion we agreed to play a three-match Test series. Along with this, we’ve got a proposal to play three more T20I matches as well. We’ll finalize our decision after an internal discussion. We are yet to settle the schedule. We’ll do it once the formats and matches are final,” Chowdhury told via a video message to media. 

The team practice camp might be held from early September, as BCB CEO hinted.

He said, “We’ll arrange a practice camp for the national team after finalizing the schedule tour to Sri Lanka. However, as per our tentative plan, if we tour Sri Lanka in later September, we’ll arrange a conditioning camp before that in Dhaka.”

A team camp will require a safe and bio-secure environment. BCB has no experience to do so in the past. It will be a huge challenge for BCB to arrange a bio-secure camp for national team players. However, a residential camp may help in this regard. 

“All the national team players are being observed by our medical team through a smartphone app. They have been informing us about their health condition on a regular basis. Once we arrange the camp, we’ll keep them in isolation, and their Covid-19 test will be done accordingly. After that, we will take steps for a residential training camp,” Nizamuddin further told media. 

Due to the Covid-19 situation, at least 14 international matches of Bangladesh have been postponed. First was the partial tour of Pakistan where Bangladesh are due to tour to play an ODI and a Test match which is the part of the ongoing World Test Championship. Beside these matches, the home series against Australia, New Zealand, away series against Ireland have also been postponed. 

BCB is trying to play all of these matches in the coming months. However, the board is currently busy with the series in Sri Lanka. In a recent media interaction, Nizamuddin had also said that the board is in discussion with the other cricket boards to make the postponed series happen in future.