Kamal Ghorui
Bangladesh’s campaign at the Under-19 ongoing World Cup has ended amid criticism from the country’s cricket board over match scheduling and travel arrangements. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) of unfair scheduling, saying repeated travel affected the team during the tournament.The issue comes at a time when the BCB has already been at odds with the ICC following its decision not to send the senior national team to India for the T20 World Cup, after which Bangladesh were replaced by Scotland. Now, BCB game development coordinator Habibul Bashar has raised concerns about the U19 team’s travel plan during the World Cup.“More than the approach, I think our calculations were lacking [against England and India]. But this [travel schedule] is something I want to highlight, even if people think I’m making excuses,” Habibul told Bangladesh news outlet The Daily Star.He added, “To avoid the boys getting too tired before the India match, the BCB actually paid for an internal flight out of its own pocket because the bus journey was too long and direct flights were scarce.”As per The Daily Star report, Bangladesh head coach Naveed Nawaz and several players expressed frustration over the schedule. The team had to travel from Harare to Bulawayo, a journey of nearly nine hours by bus during the monsoon season, ahead of their opening group match.Due to the importance of matches against India and New Zealand, the BCB arranged and paid for internal flights. However, the travel demands continued, with the team returning to Harare by bus for their match against the USA on January 23, before travelling again for the Super Six game against England in Bulawayo on January 26.“The schedule was very unfair to us. During the initial schedule, we were supposed to play two of our warm-up matches in Masvingo and travel to Bulawayo, which is a four-hour drive, for our opening two group-stage matches. Later, they [ICC] suddenly changed the schedule, and it meant we had to play two of our warm-up games at different venues, travelling back and forth,” Bashar said.He added, “We notified them [of the travel burden] before the tournament started. We asked them to move our practice games to avoid the back-and-forth travel, but they didn’t listen. Once the tournament starts, you can’t really change these things.”
