The Bangladesh Cricket Board, heavily criticised for failing to provide the national players enough practice hours before the calamitous Zimbabwe tour, has decided to start the training camp on September 8, a month before the Tigers play the next series.
Bangladesh will face West Indies in October to defend their Test and one-day series they won in 2009.
The Tigers have already surrendered the other Test series that belonged to them when they were beaten by Zimbabwe by 130 runs on the just-concluded tour.
The BCB was widely criticised for not being able to give enough opportunities to the players to train before the Zimbabwe tour. They were also unable to convince South Africa for a brief tour and decided against paying an additional $30,000 demanded by Zimbabwe for the team’s arrival in Harare two days earlier.
‘We don’t want to leave any stone unturned regarding preparation for the West Indies series,’ Sabbir Khan, cricket
operation manager of the BCB, told New Age on Sunday.
‘The camp will start shortly after the Eid vacation on September 8 and it will be followed by the BCB Challenge Cup, a one-day tournament, to be contested by the national team, the Bangladesh A team and the GP-BCB Academy side from September 14-23,’ said Sabbir.
‘This will provide the players of the national team with an opportunity to play five one-day practice matches. In between we will also hold an the skills training camp so that the players can make maximum preparations,’ he added.
‘Apart from that we have asked coach Stuart Law to submit his plans for the team so that we can also arrange one or two four-day games before the series,’ said Sabbir.
Skipper Sakib al Hasan is likely to miss a large chunk of the preparation camp as he is expected to play for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Champions League Twenty20 tournament from September 23 to October 9.
As there is no flight from Bulawayo due to the pilots’ strike, the Bangladesh team is expected to return home via Harare on August 24 at 3:00am without their foreign coaching staff who will be off on holiday.
Coach Stuart Law and fielding coach Jason Swift will go back to Manchester while conditioning trainer Grant Luden will return to South Africa where he is expecting to get married.
Physio Bibhav Singh will also go to South Africa. All members of the coaching staff are expected to return before the training camp starts.
-With New Age input
