Bangladesh Cricket Board [BCB] has decided to allow a limited number of spectators into the stadium for Bangladesh’s home series against Afghanistan.
Bangladesh are scheduled to lock horns with the tourists first in a three-match ODI series scheduled to start on Wednesday at Chattogram’s Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium [ZACS]. This will be followed by a two-match T20I series to be played at Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium [SBNS] in Dhaka.
BCB media committee chairman Tanvir Islam Titu on Sunday informed the limited number of spectators will be allowed into the venue keeping the same protocol which was in place in the just concluded Bangladesh Premier League T20 2022. In BPL T20 the board had allowed 4,000 spectators at SBNS starting with the play-off matches. In the final game of tournament, however, the attendance had reached to around 10000 and BCB had no explanation to that.
“We want to have spectators in the Bangladesh-Afghanistan series like we had allowed into the venue for the BPL T20 matches following the Covid-19 guideline set by the government. We are thinking to have three to four thousand spectators in the Chattogram matches and around 5000 spectators in Dhaka matches but we are also trying to take permission [from the government] of having 50 percent of the capacity of the venue,” informed Tanvir to the media at SBNS on Sunday.
Crowd in both Dhaka and Chattogram however will be allowed only on the upper stands of the venues informed Tanvir.
“The players and staff are part of strict bio-bubble. Sometimes the ball hits the lower stands and if a spectator picks the ball and throws it back to the field – it might break the bubble safety. So, like it was in BPL, we will not allow crowd in the lower part of the gallery,” Tanvir explained.
Bangladesh will take on Afghanistan in the first ODI on Wednesday. The second and the third matches of the series will be played on February 25 and 28 respectively. All the matches will be played at ZACS starting at 11am local time.
This will be followed by a two-match T20I series to be played at SBNS in Dhaka on March 3 and five respectively.