New Age
Samiur Rahman | Aug 16,2020
Bangladesh Twenty20 captain Mahmudullah gives a thumbs up before joining a training session at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur on Sunday. — New Age photo
The stoppage of sports in Bangladesh, which began in mid-March as a temporary measure to curb the spread of coronavirus has turned into an unforeseen five-month exile with no end to the crisis in sight.
The year 2020 was supposed to be a very busy year for the country’s sports fraternity with a number of global events scheduled to take place and different sports bodies preparing to hold special commemorative tournaments for the birth centenary of the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Cricketers were gearing up to play in the ICC Twenty20 World Cup, Asia Cup and Tests against a number of top sides while footballers were set to play in the SAFF Championship and play their remaining matches of the 2023 FIFA World Cup and 2022 Asian Cup qualifiers.
Ace archer Roman Shana was preparing to take part in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics while top golfer Siddikur Rahman was hoping to capture his maiden Bangabandhu Cup Golf Open title.
But all those tournaments got wiped out of the calendar due to the global coronavirus outbreak.
The last notable sporting action in the country took place in March 16, when six Dhaka Premier League sides took part in three first round fixtures.
After the postponement of DPL, a number of series, tours and tournaments also suffered the same fate, which included the Mujib 100 Twenty20 series between Asia XI and rest of the world XI, Australia and New Zealand’s Bangladesh tour, Bangladesh cricket team’s tour in Pakistan, Ireland and Sri Lanka.
The BCB suffered financially due to the postponement of the Asia Cup and Twenty20 World Cup but that didn’t stop them from helping financially struggling athletes and they also didn’t reduce the salary of the players like some other cricket boards around the world.
Cricketers, led by national stalwarts like, Tamim Iqbal, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahman, auctioned off their precious memorabilia and donated out of their pockets to help the struggling people of the country.
BCB has already taken steps to restart cricket announcing that they will send national team and High Performance Unit teams to Sri Lanka next month for their respective series’.
The board will also begin a camp on August 23 at the BKSP to select the next batch of Under-19 cricketers.
But the board was not keen to restart domestic cricket with BCB president Nazmul Hasan negating the chance until the country’s COVID-19 state improves significantly.
The national football team suffered a shock when FIFA and AFC postponed all the qualifiers, emptying Bangladesh’s international calendar for the rest of the year.
The camp to prepare the players had already descended into chaos with 18 of 31 players testing positive, forcing Bangladesh Football Federation to retest all players in two separate labs.
The next batch of results were also confusing with seven testing COVID-19 positive in both tests while three testing positive in one test and negative in the other.
This year two hockey events, Junior Hockey Asia Cup and Asian Championship, were scheduled to take place in Dhaka but got postponed.
Golfer Siddik wanted to end his barren period by participating in Asian tours in South Korea and Japan but travel restriction imposed by those countries on Bangladesh robbed him the opportunity.
Local golf tournaments also got halted and local professional golfers who made their living by the earnings from those tournaments and by giving golf lessons to amateurs were now living on small grants from various sources.
There is, however, a ray of hope as the government gave the green signal to sport bodies to hold tournaments on small scale and resume their activities by adhering to the health and safety policies, as per the declaration by ministry of youth and sports on August 10.
Cricketers had already started individual training in July and archery training camp is also set to begin this month but other sporting bodies are yet to make any move.
