The Bangladesh tour of Sri Lanka gets postponed again as the two cricket boards fail to settle an agreeable quarantine requirement.
Just recently, the Bangladesh Cricket Board has disagreed with Sri Lanka Cricket about the 14-day quarantine that was to be imposed on their players upon arrival. Due to this disagreement, the entire tour gets postponed once more. This time, however, no guaranteed schedule is yet to be released.
Explaining the BCB’s side further, BCB president Nazmul Hassan says, ‘The BCB is respectful to the health and safety requirements of every country during the pandemic and had requested SLC to consider a more flexible form of quarantine for the Bangladesh Team in Sri Lanka so that it could start training as a group as early as possible upon arrival’.
It was about two weeks ago when Hassan stated that their team will not push through if the 14-day quarantine was placed. Afterwards, Sri Lanka’s sports minister stated that he will ask SLC to reconsider the said matter. Their case, however, was not agreed upon.
With that, Hassan explained the current scenario by saying, ‘Any tourist who is entering Sri Lanka has to abide by this rule (of 14 days in quarantine). They (the SLC) have told us that they couldn't do anything about this point (about quarantine). We have informed them that we have to reschedule the tour to a time when things will improve’.
The reason as to why SLC has reiterated the mandatory quarantine is because of the fact that some Bangladesh players had already tested positive early on. Also, the virus seems to have spread widely in Bangladesh. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, has managed to minimize the spread of the virus and has somehow managed to go back to normal with their strict implementations.
Originally, the two teams were supposed to play three Test matches from July to August. After being postponed amid COVID-19, the games were then rescheduled to start on October 23 but had been postponed once more. To further understand Test matches, check out Betwala.
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