Sri Lanka-Bangladesh Test series in doubt

BCB president Papon said the tour, scheduled for October, will be cancelled if Bangladesh is not allowed to carry the high performance unit for practice and training in the island.

File photo of Bangladesh players during a practice session at the Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore.

Bangladesh will not travel to Sri Lanka for the proposed three Test series in October — part of the ICC World Test Championship — if they are not allowed to carry their own set of net bowlers, throwdown specialists and members of the high performance unit.

Sri Lanka Cricket sent a letter to the Bangladesh Cricket Board on Sunday stating that the tourists will have to serve a 14-day quarantine period during which the players cannot even step out of their rooms for meals, leave alone intra-squad practise matches.

On Monday, BCB president Nazmul Hasan Papon said that the board will inform SLC that it will not be possible for Bangladesh to compete in the Test championship without the basic preparation. “The last time we spoke, we felt Sri Lanka was comparatively safer given the COVID situation in Bangladesh. The number of patients were very less. They had started their domestic cricket. So we thought that it was under control.

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“Since we shut all cricketing action in Bangladesh, we felt it would be safer to practice in Sri Lanka. It would have been difficult to train in Bangladesh. We had agreed on the series for that only. We had said we would go there with our high performance unit to train and then we play the series and return,” he told reporters.

“The letter that we received from SLC yesterday tells a different story. What they want is different, it doesn’t resemble the bio-bubble conditions in other countries. Some countries have seven-day quarantine but they are practising among themselves. Here, the players are not allowed to go out of the room for 14 days, not even to eat. It could be that the COVID situation is dangerous in Sri Lanka and we are not aware of it. But they are playing domestic cricket. There could be something we don’t know. And our team is supposed to stay in Dambulla and not Colombo. It is anyway isolated,” he added.

SLC had earlier stated that it won't provide local net bowlers or organise warm-up matches. “That’s fine but they don’t want us to take our boys also. This is not child’s play. It is the ICC World Test Championship. Their mindset does not match ours. Our players haven’t played for six months, so it is not possible to go into a Test championship without practice. We have informed them about what we feel. We are ready to talk if they can come up with any other plan,” said Papon.

SLC had also told the BCB to not travel with more than 30 people, including the coaches and support staff, which will be difficult with the high performance unit on board.

SLC is expected to respond in two days.