The soon to be home of Bangladesh cricket opened its door to the Tigers on Sunday as the national cricketers made use of the newly laid indoor and outdoor pitches for the first time. From now on the country's top cricketers will be able to train here round the year come rain or shine.

The main stadium is expected to be ready for hosting matches by the end of this year and the players have to wait another couple of weeks before they can use the gymnasium. But that did not hide their excitement.

"A long-standing dream has been realised today. It is a great feeling to have a home for cricket," said Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar who also touched on something more significant.

"There will be no more excuses for not training during the rainy season. This facility is open for us round the year so that is also very exciting."

Vice-captain Khaled Mashud echoed the same sentiment.

"The practice facilities we had in England are still very much fresh in our minds. There are no substitutes for modern facilities if you want to be competitive at the highest level. But I want to such training areas all around the country," said vice-captain Khaled Mashud.

Former captain Khaled Mahmud was particularly impressed with the three indoor pitches and empha-sised on proper maintenance round the year.

"There are some areas that need improvement but I must say overall this place is fantastic. The eight outdoor pitches are very good but the indoor pitches are important also as we had to face a lot of problems with the bowling crease at grounds where we had trained before."

Coach Dav Whatmore was undaunted by the traffic noise coming from the adjacent main street and was visibly satisfied with what Mirpur had to offer.

"I think this place has got tremendous potential. There are some areas that can improve but this is just the beginning.

"There are eight turf wickets here but I'm looking forward to the day when there will be 128 such pitches across the city. That would give more players the opportunity to train on standard wickets."

The practice area was abuzz with life as fans arrived in numbers when the news filtered through that the Tigers were training there. It was a far cry from the gloomy days of top level football at the same ground when it struggled to attract any crowd worth mentioning.

When batting sensation Mohammad Ashraful and pace ace Mashrafee-bin-Mortuza came out of the indoors after practice, they were instantly engulfed by the fans.

"There was no excitement with football here but I can assure you that things will be totally different with the arrival of the cricketers," said Hasibul Islam, a school student who came to get an autograph from his favourite batsman Ashraful.