The longer-version Young Tigers Under-18 National Cricket Competition will begin from January 14 in five venues across the country with the aim to build a team for the Under-19 World Cup, said Bangladesh Cricket Board officials on Friday.
Dhaka South, Khulna, Rangpur, Dhaka Metro and Chittagong are placed in Group A while Dhaka North, BKSP, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Barisal will face-off in Group B of the ten-team competition.
Dhaka South will take on Chittagong at Rajshahi’s Shaheed Kamruzzaman Stadium while Barisal will face Dhaka North at the Rangpur Cricket Garden in the tournament openers.
‘We want to provide them with the best available wickets as they are the future of Bangladesh cricket,’ Khaled Mahmud, age-level director of BCB’s game development, told reporters at the press conference in Mirpur.
‘Through this tournament we want to start emphasising on building a team for the next Under-19 World Cup to be played in UAE in 2014,’ said Mahmud.
Primarily the assigned talent scouts of BCB selected 25-40 players based on their performance in their respective divisional competition before they had a 4-day residential camp under the supervision of the divisional and district coaches.
The18-member squad of each division, consisting four pace bowlers, eight batsman, four spinners and two wicket-keepers, were selected from the camp.
The selectors will spot 30 players from this longer-version tournament who will undergo a central training camp under the national
coaches before 24 players will be finalised and considered as U-19 national pool players.
The national pool players will participate in a number of high-performance training camps while they will also play home and away series’ against other full member countries as part of the preparation for the next World Cup.
Gazi Ashraf Hossain, director of game development, added that the three-day matches will help the players to understand the format while it will also accustom them to play in different conditions.
‘The recent debutants for Bangladesh – Sohag Gazi, Anamul Haque, Mominul Haque and Abul Hasan – are products of the age-level competition and we need to focus more as that is the breeding place for having a good pipeline,’ said Ashraf.
Both the groups will play on a single-league basis format at four venues in Rajshahi, Bogra, Rangpur and Dinajpur before the top two teams of each group play in the semi-finals.
The final is scheduled from February 13-15 at the Rajshahi’s SKS.
-With New Age input
