Bangladesh to play intra-squad matches after Sri Lanka tour postponement
Sep 30, 2020
Dhaka [Bangladesh], September 30 : After the postponement of the Sri Lanka tour, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) announced that the senior team will continue to train at their camp in Dhaka, during which the players will play three long-format practice matches.
Bangladesh were scheduled to play a three-match Test series against Sri Lanka for the first time in six years in October but now they must wait till January for the home series against West Indies.
Bangladesh Test skipper Mominul Haque wants to play domestic cricket after the international tour was suspended.
"As a player it is disappointing. We had an opportunity to play after six months but it is out of our control. I don't want to think too much about it. I think every team has to deal with the difficulty of returning after a long break these days. I think if we get to play domestic cricket before international matches, we can cover some of that gap," ESPNcricinfo quoted Haque as saying.
"It is difficult to understand what exactly is the situation when there's no international cricket," he added.
The practice matches are likely to be followed by a T20 tournament, which will also have players from the high-performance set-up and others. The BCB is also hoping that the clubs will agree to restart the 2019-20 Dhaka Premier League, which was postponed after one round of matches in March.
Selector Habibul Bashar feels that senior players of the side are losing out on their crucial years.
"It is unfortunate that the players have lost a year of their career. Tamim Iqbal misses out on a thousand runs. Mushfiqur Rahim misses out on a few centuries. They do not get any younger. But there's not much we can do in a pandemic," Bashar said.
"[Coming back after the break] will be a big challenge for us, definitely. It is never good to stay out of international cricket for so long. We will be out for almost a year. It is not going to be easy. If we utilise our domestic cricket, we will be better prepared. We wouldn't have been too well prepared ahead of this Sri Lanka series, but it would have at least been a start," he added.
