Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) Game Development Committee has chalked out a long term plan for the preparation of the Bangladesh Under-19 national team for the next World Cup campaign.
The next ICC U-19 World Cup will be held in New Zealand in 2018, in where Bangladesh seek to do better further what they didn’t fare at home turf in 2016. Bangladesh derailed from the competition losing to West Indies at the semifinal stages.
This was decided in a meeting of the committee yesterday with Game Development Committee chairman Khaled Mahmud Sujon in the chairman.
“We want to prepare a conflict free calendar for both the age-level and senior level cricket tournaments. In particular this time we are serious to avoid any mixing up with another tournament,” Khaled said.
“We sat to discuss the problems of grounds, preparing a suitable calendar, schedule of the next competitions without conflict and other issues related to the age-level and senior level cricket,” said Khaled Mahmud Sujon. Coaches and development officials were also presenting the meeting.
“We sat for holding BCL, NCL, BPL and DPL coupled with age-level competition and second division, first division and third on time so that any competition could not mix up with another one,” Sujon told after coming out of meeting at the Stadium Lounge.
“We actually prepare a calendar every year to keep the fixation of the domestic competition. We had planned to arrange the BCL but the series against Afghanistan is going to be held soon. And so, we have to organise the NCL to avert the problem. As BCL is a franchise-based tournament the organisers seek to ensure the participation of the national team’s players. They could not take part ahead of the Afghanistan series and so they didn’t show any interest to play the league. We’ll host the BCL after the end of the NCL and BPL,” he added.
The game development chairman said that they have decided to start the camp of U-17 and U-19 after the Under-15.
“The two-tier preparation camp for the Under-15 has been ended at Khulna following BKSP phase. The Under-17 preparation camp will start on September 23. Apart from that, Under-19 will also play a string of practice matches in Cox’s Bazar after the Eid vacation,” Khaled said.
“The selection process of the U-19 for the new campaign is still going on. We have plans to reshuffle the team, in where we will keep the maximum 24 players who will practice and tour round the year,” he also said.
Mahmud said that they could be able to form a stronger Under-19 squad for the next campaign within the one and half-a-year what he have in hands.
“We will get only three to four players from our previous squad and that the bulk of the team’s players will be fresher. We are very lucky that we got a good number of potential players in the current contingent,” the former captain said.
“Hopefully we could be formed a stronger squad for the next campaign. We have one and half-a-year ahead. We could prepare a stronger side within this period,” he added.