Tigresses’ less than ideal buildup for Asia Cup

Rainy weather and a lack of facilities hampered Bangladesh women's team's training camp at the BKSP which ended on Friday and left the team somewhat undercooked before they head off to Sri Lanka for the forthcoming ACC Women's T20 Asia Cup on July 16.

The camp started on July 3 and was held keeping the forthcoming regional tournament in mind, scheduled for July 19-28, where they had emerged as champions in 2018 in Malaysia.

The camp was also an opportunity for the girls to identify and hopefully rectify their problems after poor performances in recent home series' against Australia and India respectively.

However, most of their training sessions as well as practice matches got interrupted by the rain, forcing them to shift some of the scheduled practice sessions indoors.

Only two of the four scheduled practice matches could be played to completion while the other two were held partially owing to the downpour.

The previously scheduled match scenario practice session on Friday also couldn't take place due to torrential rain.

Photo: Firoz Ahmed

Even though the BKSP has multiple cricket grounds, the women's team's preparation was mostly limited to the BKSP-4 ground as the other grounds are occupied in other engagements.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has already taken over the BKSP-3 ground, which alongside BKSP-4 ground will host warm-up matches ahead of the ICC Women's T20 World Cup in Bangladesh, scheduled to be held on October 3-20.

The Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka and the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium will host the matches in the tournament and both are now under ICC's supervision, as is the rule for all ICC events.

The men's Under-19 team are also running a residential camp at BKSP, scheduled to run till July 20, while the High Performance unit had a training camp in Rajshahi before leaving for the Australia tour yesterday while the Bangladesh Tigers are currently training in Chattogram.

Questions now naturally arise whether the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) gave enough emphasis on providing better training facilities for the women's team ahead of a major tournament or were they too focused on the men's developmental teams.

In an attempt to make up for the lacklustre training camp, the BCB has planned two more days of practice for the team at the Academy ground in Mirpur on July 14-15.

"It's true that our camp was interrupted by rain. Because of that reason, the camp has been extended by two days," Habibul Bashar, women's wing head, told The Daily Star yesterday.

"We had no other options. We picked BKSP in order to play five to six practice matches which we couldn't have done in other venues. Mirpur is busy with World Cup preparation. Sylhet and Chattogram were also engaged in different reasons.

"Actually, there is rain all over the country. No matter where we would hold the camp, the result would be the same," concluded Bashar.

During a recent BCB interview, vice-captain Nahida Akter expressed her dissatisfaction over not getting enough practice.

"I can't say our preparation is a 100 percent. It has been raining all over the country for the last few days. We are still practicing. We have practiced at the indoor as we didn't get chance to do it outside."