The four-member International Cricket Council (ICC) delegation led by its chief executive officer Dave Richardson left Dhaka yesterday citing satisfaction over the primary arrangements for hosting the Under-19 World Cup from January 22 to February 14 in Bangladesh next year.
Security has been a concern for westerners in Bangladesh since last month when Australia postponed their tour here on the back of security reasons. South Africa Cricket also made the same move suspending their women’s team tour of the country.
“The purpose of this visit was to meet with the relevant security agencies and make sure we understand exactly what the arrangements from their perspective. Now it’s a question of developing a plan. This has been a very successful trip and BCB has been very open and has arranged for us all the relevant people that we needed to meet which includes the police, the special forces, the military forces etc. Now we need to get the plan in place. Once its finalised we will be able to present that confidential report to the board,” said Richardson to the media yesterday.
The ICC CEO is confident that Bangladesh will be able to stage a successful event given the history of the country of hosting multinational events. He added, “There have been concerns so we needed to go to the bottom of that and understand what the threat is. We now undertsnad what the threat is, we know what it is needed to done and put a plan in place. ICC recognises that it has become more challenging for staging an event from security point of view. It is the same for all the countries – Australia, England, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and others. As I have said it is a normal process that we go through, we are living in challenging times and we need to make sure that we are prepared for every event.”
