DHAKA – The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is yet to finalize the Tigers tour in Sri Lanka for a bilateral series since the coronavirus situation in the country doesn’t improve significantly.
Even though the board gives the players permission to practice at individual capacity, they made it mandatory that a player won’t get more than one assistant during their training session.
Sri Lanka on the other hand claimed to contain the spread of the deadly virus that continued causing mayhem around the world. The Island nation so far reported 1835 cases and only 11 deaths from the highly contagious virus.
In the wake of the situation, the Lankan board had already started the player’s practice session and declared that if Bangladesh doesn’t come for a tour, they will arrange Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) T20.
Bangladesh was scheduled to play the series in Sri Lanka in late July but they need to leave the country at least three weeks prior to the tour since they have to quarantine themselves for 14 days once they land in Sri Lanka.
While the players are out of action for the last three months, it looks impossible to start practice right at this moment for the tour and prepare well.
But no BCB officials made it clear that the tour won’t be happened in the wake of the situation.
“We are yet to finalize whether we’ll visit Sri Lanka for the series,” Cricket Operations chairman Akram Khan told the BSS today.
“Everything depends on the situation of the coronavirus. We are observing the situation, we will see what happens. But as far as the present state is concerned, the tour is uncertain.”
According to Akram, all facilities for the players are prepared for their practice session but that doesn’t mean the tour will be on.
“Players wanted to practice at individual capacity and therefore we gave them permission. But there is some restriction as the player won’t get more than one assistant during the training session,” he said.
“But we don’t encourage players to come out and do practice in the outside. We gave them guidelines to train at home, which they are doing. But if they feel it is mandatory to come in ground, they would come and would train by maintaining social distance.”
Akram however was reluctant to tell anything final on the Sri Lanka tour despite all the sign showed that the series is going to be postponed.
“I can’t say at this moment [it is postponed]. There are many things involved on it. The board will take the final decision. The safety of the cricketers will get the top most priority and as I said earlier, we don’t want to take risk with player’s health issue.”BSS
