The much-awaited Bangladesh cricket team’s tour of Sri Lanka was called off yesterday, after Sri Lankan health authorities turned down the request of Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) seeking a reduction on the quarantine period, which forced both Boards to push back the tour to a later date, which might be next year.
After several weeks of communication and discussions up and down, the Lankan health authorities refused to come down on the quarantine period considering the Covid-19 pandemic’s effectiveness in the region, which is at an alarming state.
Two weeks back Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa intervened and requested Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) officials to meet the Head of the Covid Task Force, Army Commander Shavendra Silva, who in turn made a valiant effort to make this tour a reality. But with the frequent requests by the BCB seeking changes and the local health authorities being very firm on the quarantine period, little progress was made.
The tour was part of the ICC World Test Championship and set to commence on the 27th of this month, and the matches (three Tests) to commence from October 24. The tour will be rescheduled based on the International Cricket Calendars of both nations.
The ‘Daily Star’ one of the Bangladesh’s prominent newspapers, quoted BCB President Nazmul Hassan as having said yesterday: “The guidelines that they had given, it’s not possible to play a Test Championship under those conditions. Their Cricket Board and Sports Ministry tried their best and they agreed to all bat one of our requests. But the one they denied was the most important, the 14-day quarantine period. What we understand by quarantine and isolation are different. When one isolates with Covid-19, they can’t get out of the room so what they saying as quarantine for 14 days is full isolation.”
“Under those conditions, a player’s mental and physical condition will take a lot of time to recover. So, we had to let them know that it wasn’t possible to play under such conditions. However, they couldn’t do anything about that protocol since the Government makes the rules and that is the protocol in their country,” Hassan added.
Sri Lanka had asked for a strict 14-day quarantine for the Tigers and without permission to train until the period was over. The BCB President had said that the protocols were not acceptable and SLC then met with the island nation’s Covid-19 Task Force in order to find a solution and get international cricket back on track.
However, SLC CEO Ashley Silva later said that if BCB were not willing to abide by protocols set by the country’s Covid-19 Task Force, the tour will be called off and rescheduled.
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