Bangladesh Cricket Board said on Tuesday that they are hopeful of hosting Sri Lanka in the upcoming two-match series despite their political turmoil.
Sri Lanka Cricket postponed the Bangladesh High-Performance Unit’s tour due to the ongoing financial crisis in the country while doubts were raised whether they will be able to tour Bangladesh in May or not for the Test series which is part of ICC Test Championship.
“Regarding the national team’s assignment, we are in communication with them (SLC) and they are fully committed to their schedule of touring Bangladesh,” BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury told reporters on Tuesday.
”What we still know, the tour will be held as per the schedule, and we are planning everything according to the schedule. I think SLC are also committed, they will also tour as per the schedule,” he said.
The Sri Lankan team is set to arrive in Bangladesh on May 8 and play a two-day warm-up match at the MA Aziz Stadium in Chattogram on May 11 and 12, ahead of the two-match Test series, which is set to begin on May 15 at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Cricket Stadium in Chattogram.
The second Test is to be played at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka from May 23.
Meanwhile, Nizamuddin added that Bangladesh, who have not toured Australia and England in recent past, will be playing against them once the new FTP (Future Tours Program) comes into effect.
“We have talked to the relevant boards to resolve these issues about playing in away tours and have gotten some positive indications. Hopefully, when the next FTP comes, there will be a reflection,” said Nizamuddin, who recently attended the ICC meeting.
Nizamuddin added that they were unable to host ICC Under-19 World Cup, which was initially awarded to Bangladesh but later ICC announced that South Africa will host it, due to international commitments
”There is a confusion about it. We were interested to host the first edition of U-19 Women’s World cup and accordingly that was awarded to Bangladesh Cricket Board. That was in 2020 probably. But, ICC didn’t arrange it due to Covid situation,” said Nizamuddin.
Later, they also wanted to know whether we are interested to host it and we gave our expression to them. Our initial proposal to stage it is Dhaka, but now the matter is, we can’t arrange it in Dhaka due to our FTP commitment and other commitments,” he said
”Since we have to arrange ICC U-19 WWC outside of Dhaka we need some extra logistic arrangements and it will be difficult for us. Later, ICC worked with some other options and finally decided to give to South Africa,” he said.
”It is not like that ICC took it from us. They proposed to us, but we have other things like hosting international teams and our domestic leagues and so we were not interested,” he added.
