Bangladesh’s campaign in the ongoing Under-19 World Cup has ended amid criticism from the country’s cricket board over the fixture list and travel arrangements. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) of unfair scheduling, saying the repeated travel has affected the team during the tournament.The issue comes at a time when the BCB has already fallen out with the ICC following its decision not to send the senior national team to India for the T20 World Cup, which saw Bangladesh replaced by Scotland. Now, BCB Game Development Coordinator Habibul Bashar has raised concerns about the U19 team’s travel schedule during the World Cup.“More than approach, I think our calculations were off (against England and India). But this (the travel schedule) is something I want to emphasize, even if people think I’m making excuses,” Habibul told Bangladesh news outlet The Daily Star.He added: “To prevent the boys from getting too tired before the India match, BCB actually paid for the internal flight out of their own pocket as the bus journey was too long and direct flights were rare.”According to a report by The Daily Star, Bangladesh head coach Naveed Nawaz and several players have expressed frustration over the plan. The team had to travel from Harare to Bulawayo, a journey of almost nine hours by bus during the monsoon season, before their opening group game.Due to the importance of the matches against India and New Zealand, BCB arranged and paid for internal flights. However, travel demands continued and the team returned to Harare by bus on 23 January for a match against the USA and traveled again on 26 January for a Super Six match against England in Bulawayo.“The schedule was very unfair to us. During the original plan, we were supposed to play two of our warm-up matches in Masvingo and travel to Bulawayo, which is a four-hour drive, for our opening two group stage matches. Later, they (ICC) suddenly changed the schedule and that meant we had to play two of our warm-up matches in different places and travel back and forth,” Bashar said.He added: “We warned them (about the travel burden) before the tournament started. We asked them to move our practice games to avoid traveling back and forth, but they didn’t listen. You can’t really change these things once the tournament starts.”
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