Sports Desk:

The Bangladesh Kabaddi Federation (BKF) will start kabaddi camps with the athletes for the two upcoming events – Asian Youth Games and South Asian (SA) Games – in the first week of July.

The third edition of the Asian Youth Games will be held in Bahrain from October 22-31. The games will feature 21 sports and 26 disciplines, while the SA Games are scheduled for January 23-31 in Pakistan next year.

On Saturday, BKF general secretary SM Newaz Shohag informed that the federation is going to start four camps simultaneously for the Asian Youth Games and SA Games in the first week of July and the camp will continue till the Games.

He said initially fifty talented boys and an equal number of girls, who have been selected from the Festival of Youth this year, will take part in the Asian Youth Games camp. On the contrary, thirty men and an equal number of women athletes will participate in the SA Games camp. The number of athletes would be trimmed later stage.

The camps will be held in different venues in the capital and outside of the capital, he added.

Shohag said: “Athletes’ training works under the Bangladesh Olympic Association is supervised by the National Sports Council (NSC). Since the NSC’s ongoing talent hunt program at the grassroots level will continue till June 30, our camps will start in the first week of July after the NSC’s talent hunt program.”

The BKF general secretary replying to a question said they have plan to appoint a foreign coach for the two big events so that the coach can give time to both Youth Asian Games and SA Games camps.

“Actually, we have to rely hugely on India to recruit any foreign coach for the team… we have already contacted several coaches of India but facing difficulty with linguistic problem, visa complication and some other issues with them but we hope we’ll be able to reach a pragmatic decision regarding the coach shortly.” Sohag said.

Bangladesh won bronze medal in kabaddi in the last SA Games held in Nepal however, the federation’s general secretary is hopeful as he is expecting a silver medal this time in kabaddi.