The Bangladesh Cricket Board on Monday announced to launch ‘BCB Academy Cup 2018’ with the participation of 32 selected cricket coaching academies of Dhaka Metropolitan zone.
This will be the first edition of such competition organised by the BCB Game Development Department which is likely to get underway on May 20.
The tournament will be played on knock-out basis and a total of 31 matches will be held in three different venues – Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan, City Club Ground, and Dhaka University Ground.
‘We want to engage the cricket academies in Dhaka city with Bangladesh Cricket Board,’ BCB chief execute officer Nizamuddin Chowdhury told reporters at a press conference in Mirpur.
‘We want the academies to be under the cricket board in a constructive manner. It will ensure the players playing facilities. We will try to find out players so that we can get fresh talents from such tournament,’ he added.
The tournament will be a 40-over competition where players aged between 15 to 18 can participate in the event.
Players, who are registered with Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis and played for any club or academy in any type of domestic competition, will not be eligible to play in the tournament.
‘We have taken this tournament as a pilot project,’ said BCB game development committee chairman Khaled Mahmud.
‘A total of 32 teams will participate in the tournament although there are many academies in Dhaka. But we have set a criterion for the participating teams, like the duration they have been operating. We also observed their grounds, practice facilities and after monitoring all these we selected these teams,’ he added.
The tournament came after the BCB had restricted the chance of academies to play in the third division qualifying tournament by raising its entry fees to an unreasonable proportion.
After the BCB had asked for Tk 5 lakh as entry fees for the third division qualifying league, no more than two teams sent their entry for the competition in the last two seasons.
Previously the tournament had seen the participation of dozens of teams – mostly the academies, who took this tournament as their gateway for competitive cricket.
Mahmud also revealed that they would select a group of players from the newly-launched tournament to provide them higher training facilities under National Cricket Academy for five weeks.
‘We will try to get 15-20 players but it is just a number. If we get more good players then obviously we will bring them here,’ he said.
Mahmud was hopeful the tournament would raise interest among the youngsters across the country, adding that they would invite the divisional academies from the next year.
‘We want to increase the interest of our boys in the whole country…we will try to increase the teams from the next year. We also want to invite one or two academies from each division from next year,’ he added.
The final of the inaugural competition will take place on June 5.
The champions will receive Tk 1,00,000 while the runners-up team will get Tk 50,000 as prize money.
Source: New Age.
