The Bangladesh Cricket Board has undertaken an elaborate programme to instill competitive mindset amongst the age level players, who are being deprived of enough exposures.
Unlike past years, the BCB’s game development committee said it will organise several programmes and will also arrange series against overseas teams to groom up the young players.The progamme includes three-week long training camps for each of the Under-15, Under-17 and Under-19 teams, starting from July 22 at the Bangladesh Krira Sikkha Protisthan.
The BKSP facilities were made available for BCB age-group teams only this year and BCB officials said will help the youngsters a great deal.
Initially, Bangladesh Under-15 team will hold the camp from July 22 to August-12 at the BKSP nets. The newly-formed Bangladesh Under-19 team will then hold a camp from August 19 to September 9 using the same facilities.
Bangladesh Under-17 team will hold a camp for three weeks, the same duration the other two camps, at the same place from September 16. After the BKSP leg, the three age-group teams will hold similar camps in Cox’s Bazar and Khulna in September and October.
‘This is for the first time we are going to use the facilities of BKSP for our age-group teams,’ BCB’s game development manager Nazmul Abedin told New Age on Monday. ‘It will allow us to do some intense work with the age-group players.’
The competitive mindset will be at the focal points in the programmes as the BCB said it is sometimes difficult to provide international exposures for these young players.
‘We always want to arrange international matches for them. But it is sometime difficult as most of the countries do not have teams at under-15 or under-17 levels,’ said Nazmul Abedin.
‘So, we need to rely on Indian state teams and Sri Lanka for giving them international exposures. We are in regular touch with these two countries to arrange some matches.’
As the teams lacked international exposures, Nazmul said they have concentrated on arranging more matches for the young cricketers domestically.
For the last two years, the BCB arranged a tournament with 10 teams, which include eight divisional sides (Dhaka was split into North and South), Dhaka Metro and BKSP.
The selectors then formed three teams, picking the best players from the tournament and those three teams played each other in a challenge series in Khulna.
Game development manager Nazmul said they are now planning to introduce a zonal-based tournament for the age-level teams so that the players can get a competitive atmosphere.
‘I do agree playing a ‘challenge series’ cannot always help,’ he said. ‘So, we need to give them some competition. This is why we are trying to introduce the zonal-based competition.’
Mufassinul Islam Topu, a BCB development coach of Sathkira put an emphasis on organising more competitions at district level.
‘We can engage more players if we arrange such competitions at district level,’ said Topu, who helped national cricketer Mustafizur Rahman as a young kid. ‘When the number is big, it is easy to filter and consider many things,’ he said.
-With New Age input
