Sports Desk:
Bangladesh Cricket Board’s cricket operation committee is planning to start a training programme under their umbrella, confirmed the chairman of the wing.
The move that was initiated by the BCB cricket operation as per the request of the national cricketers puts the future of BCB’s much-talked-about Bangladesh Tigers programme under a cloud.
The BCB introduced a new programme, called Bangladesh Tigers in June 2021, primarily aimed at providing round-the-year training facilities for cricketers in the national scheme of things but not in the national team.
In 2021, the BCB formed a committee – Bangladesh Tigers – with Kazi Inam Ahmed as its chairman and Obeid Rashid Nizam as vice-chairman.
However, the last programme was completed in April 2023 and following that two and a half months training programme, no initiative was taken to come up with the training session. “We are planning to have a programme that will keep the players (who are on the national radar but not involved in any international cricket or domestic cricket) busy throughout the years. Some local coaches will work under operation with the players (throughout the year) and the players (national) also requested for it,” BCB’s Cricket Operation Chairman Jalal Yunus told The Daily Sun recenly.
Another BCB official said that they are planning to bring some coaches in cricket operations from BCB game development.
“Overall the coaching staff is under the BCB game development. Naturally, when the coaches are needed in the national team, we (cricket operations) hire coaches from the game development. It creates problems for the game development while we also have to face hassles to hire the coaches,” said the official.
“It is a problem to bring a coach who is running a programme of game development. So to get out of the problem, we felt that Tigers, HP and operations need to have separate coaching panels. “Look if a coach is not available, it is difficult to get a replacement and if we don’t upgrade the local coaches (by letting them handle national players), the coaching panel won’t improve as well. So considering everything, could not be reached on the phone despite several attempts to know their next course of action. we are making such a plan (having some coaches under BCB cricket operations),” he said.
“We have calculated that during the ongoing T20Is (against Zimbabwe) there will be 13 to 14 players who have played in the national team recently. Now the question is where they will train because they are neither part of HP nor age-level.
So thinking about everything, we are planning a programme,” he added.
Meanwhile, BCB’s Game Development Chairman Khaled Mahmud said that he is aware of the development.
“Mushfiqur( Rahim) was telling me that we are sitting idle and we want to have a camp as we are going to have Test matches in future.
I told him that it was a very good idea. They want to do the camp in Rajshahi or Bogura and I said it is okay.
They (cricket operations) want to take a coach from game development and they have already taken his interview,” he said.
Meanwhile, a member of the Bangladesh Tigers programme on request of anonymity said that they are not sure about the future of the development project initiated by the board with a huge dream.
“I am not sure when we will have our next programme. In these two years, we had probably five programmes with the last one completed in April last year. The program ran for around two and a half months,” he said.
“All I can say is that the initiative (Tigers programme) was very good but if we consider their activities, it is not close to where it should have been. I am not sure when we will have our next programme or whether we will have any programme,” he added.
Manjurul Islam, who joined the development project as the programme manager,