Cancellation of Australia tour leaves BCB officials miffed

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is not all impressed with the decision of Cricket Australia (CA) to cancel their tour Down Under which was scheduled later this year. According to ICC’s Future Tour Program, the Tigers had to play two Tests and three ODIs in August and September this year. But they have called off the tour considering it will not any financial value for them to stage any cricketing action when Football season is on top in the country.

Australia’s free-to-air broadcasters also seem least interested in televising the series in the middle of a Football season. The Australian cricket board also informed the BCB regarding the same and confirmed that the tour was not ‘commercially viable’ for them. However, it is being understood that CA has compensated by inviting Bangladesh for a T20 International series in 2019 after the World Cup.

This is really disappointing

The CEO of BCB, Nizamuddin Chowdhury, was not at all happy with the decision and has expressed his disappointment. He was of the opinion that all the series won’t be profitable always and such a step from CA was not expected. “They have told us this series is not financially viable due to the off-season. This is really disappointing. All the series we hosted were not always profitable. If we can conduct them, we would expect the other cricket boards, especially bigger ones like Cricket Australia, to do the same,” he was quoted as saying by Indian Express.

BCB also tried to continue the tour by proposing another alternative but the Australian cricket board is least interested to host them this year with a packed schedule. “We have proposed a shorter version as an alternative. But it looks like they are not continuing. So, this series is not going to happen,” Chowdhury added. Interestingly, Australia had previously cancelled their tour to Bangladesh last year due to security reasons and visited the country only last year in August.

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