Bangladesh Cricket Board is mulling having a second national team for men not as a luxury but from necessity.
BCB president Nazmul Hasan expressed the board’s intention following its Annual General Meeting after a gap of four years at a hotel in the capital Thursday.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw many bilateral cricket series get postponed and to recover the schedule there is no option but letting two teams play at the same time, said the BCB president.
Teams like India and England have come up with the decision of having two national teams playing series at the same time.
India recently made one team tour England and another to Sri Lanka.
It will be interesting to see how these openers respond in the five T20Is against @BLACKCAPS with an eye on the @T20WorldCup.https://t.co/HgowAm05lj
— Dhaka Tribune Sports (@Sport_DT) August 25, 2021
England hosted Pakistan and the West Indies at the same time.
“The days are not far away when we will also have two teams [national] play different opponents at the same time. Pakistan are scheduled to tour Bangladesh in November this year. We also have series against Sri Lanka and New Zealand, so we may actually see this [having two teams] happen,” said Nazmul to the media.
“But we should not get impatient on this. You will see new players playing the matches and they might not perform to the level. I will request everyone to be patient as I strongly believe it is possible for us to have two teams,” the BCB chief added.
Nazmul’s confidence of having a second Bangladesh team is driven from a strong pipeline that he claims Bangladesh cricket is possessing now.
“We have been hearing for a long time that we lack a good pipeline. We did not have appropriate replacements. But now we have a lot of players as options, like you can see Mohammad Naim and Afif Hossain, they are playing really well. Then there are players coming from the U-19 team like Shariful [Islam], brilliant. We are past the time when the team had to depend on just a few players,” said Nazmul.
