For the first time in country’s sports history Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is set to introduce random dope tests which will be conducted before the upcoming National Cricket League (NCL), the BCB Physiotherapist Debashish Chowdhury said on July 19.
He said the test was supposed to be introduced some time ago, “Our board’s medical committee and chief executive officer wanted to start the test from the DPL but as you know the competition has not begun yet and we are planning to introduce this from the NCL,” said Debashish.
The head physiotherapist of the BCB also said that the board is planning to introduce the test in the Bangladesh Premier League as well.
Although the BCB has been holding anti-doping awareness programmes for last couple of years they are yet to hold any tests because of various reasons, especially cost related.
“Bangladesh cricket board started their anti-doping awareness programme with age level teams as well as the senior teams, and we do this under the supervision of World anti doping agency (Wada) and ICC,”said Debashish.
He also said that the technical facilities required for anti-doping test are not available in Bangladesh and therefore the BCB will take support from overseas technicians.
“Bangladesh doesn’t have the testing facilities, we will collect samples and send them to laboratories abroad such as Thailand, Malaysia or South Africa where they will be tested,” informed Debashish.
Deabashish later revealed that the initiative is not a spontaneous idea of BCB but did so after instructions from ICC.
“The anti doping wing of ICC wanted to take this initiative and informed the BCB to start the dope test in our domestic cricket,” added Debashish.
“The problem is these tests are very expensive as each test requires almost 700 dollars, but we will try to make this and already BCB has approved the budget for this,” said Debashish.
He explained the whole process of the test and said how it is conducted all over the world, “World Anti Doping Association (WADA) is the mother organisation while they have affiliated bodies in every nation although there is almost no movement in Bangladesh,” he said.
“This test is not only important for our players to find out the offenders, if there are any, but also to create awareness among athletes”.
But Debashish also mentioned that theoretically the use of dope in cricket does not help the players as the game is dependant on skill more than anything else.
