As many as 18 footballers of the Bangladesh national team testing Covid-19 positive in the last two days prior to their training camp has raised fresh concern as to whether it is safe to get any sport, let it be football or cricket, back on the field right now amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Although the Bangladesh Cricket Board encouraged the players to stay at home and do light training on their own, a few cricketers wished to start practice at the field before Eid-ul-Adha.
Later, BCB arranged training facilities under special arrangement for the players who applied for individual practice session.
Initially these nine players practiced seven days before Eid in the first phase of individual training, now the second phase will begin from Saturday where a total of 26 cricketers will take part in specific schedule.
But after the incident of 18 footballers testing positive, concern has been raised whether the cricketers should also do their test before starting training.
All sorts of cricket activities have been suspended in the country since mid-March due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The overall situation in Bangladesh makes for grim reading as the country has crossed the 250,000 mark in confirmed cases, with 2,851 people testing positive in the past 24 hours.
With the latest figures, the number of total confirmed cases has jumped to 252,502.
The country also recorded 27 more deaths over the same period, taking the number of fatalities to 3,333, according to Directorate General of Health Services.
BCB chief physician Dr. Debashish Chowdhury informed that the individual training sessions of the cricketers are being conducted according to the guidelines set by International Cricket Council.
“Since it is individual training session and players are returning home after each day of practice, it’s not feasible to test them every day. What we can do is to ensure and maintain the hygiene of the venues and training facilities and we are already doing it,” said Dr Debashish to Dhaka Tribune.
“We are maintaining the rules set by ICC on individual training session in this pandemic situation. Like we are maintaining social distancing, two players are not practicing at the same time, we are cleaning the facilities after their training ends. The experience from the first phase will help us to follow the rules in this second phase of practice as well.”
However, the BCB doctor confirmed that every player will be tested before any kind of residential training starts.
“When players start residential camp, then obviously tests will be carried out on selected players and staffs. Like, U-19 team’s camp will start soon. We will test every player before sending them to the camp,” he said.
Bangladesh were scheduled to tour Sri Lanka last month for a three-match Test series, part of the World Test Championship but it was later postponed to a later date owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.
BCB and Sri Lanka Cricket are negotiating about arranging the series in the coming months.