BCB reluctant to host cricket at home due to COVID-19

BCB president Nazmul Hassan (M) addresses mediaUNB

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan on Saturday said the board is not thinking of hosting cricket at present because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the country, reports UNB.

He said cricket at home is too risky before the pandemic situation gets better or a vaccine comes along.

However, the board has no problem with their next foreign tour to Sri Lanka as the country is handling the COVID-19 situation with great care.

“We can’t start playing cricket at home without the pandemic situation getting better or we’ve a vaccine. It’ll only be welcoming danger if we decided to start domestic cricket now,” Nazmul told the media on Saturday at the BCB headquarters in Mirpur, Dhaka.

Bangladesh’s last domestic match was held in mid-March, which was only the first round of games of the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League. After a week of that round, the government announced a countrywide general holiday aiming to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus disease.

I’ve proposed to organise most parts of our training camp in Sri Lanka which is a safer place than Dhaka
BCB president Nazmul Hassan

The BCB boss, however, finds no problem to tour Sri Lanka as the country is still not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as Bangladesh is.

“New Zealand and Sri Lanka are the only two countries who have been doing well against coronavirus. We saw that new infections have been recorded in New Zealand recently. But Sri Lanka is still safe,” he said.

The tour of Sri Lanka was originally scheduled to be held in July-August but it was postponed due to the virus situation. But now, both the boards agreed to play the series in October-November. The first Test of the series is slated to be played from 24 October. This series comprises a total of three Tests.

Bangladesh national cricket team players (men) takes part in the final day of second phase of individual practice session at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, Mirpur, Dhaka on 13 August
Twitter Handle Bangladesh Cricket

Bangladesh team might fly for Sri Lanka on 23 or 24 September. Before that, a training camp might take place in Dhaka. However, it’s not finalised yet.

“I’ve proposed to organise most parts of our training camp in Sri Lanka which is a safer place than Dhaka. Before that, we’ll host a shorter training camp in Dhaka and make it longer in Sri Lanka,” Namzul said.

“We have to find apartments or a five-star hotel to ensure a bio-secure environment for the cricketers during the camp. If we go to a hotel, we have to make sure that one or two floors will be under complete lockdown.”

Due to the coronavirus, a part of Bangladesh’s Pakistan tour has been postponed. Along with this, home series against Australia, New Zealand have also been postponed with the away series against Ireland.