Anisur Rahman

Although Bangladesh Premier League clubs settled contract issues with foreign recruits in line with the FIFA-prescribed process of reaching mutual understandings, settlement of local players’ contracts have not been completed three-and-a-half months since the halt of the league.

The recent two-year contract extension of Bangladesh head coach Jamie Day is evidence of the Bangladesh Football Federation’s (BFF’s) satisfaction over the Englishman’s performance with the national team.

Without a bow and arrow for three months because of the coronavirus-induced halt in sports, Bangladesh’s top archer Ruman Sana had begun to feel that he had moved away from the discipline. But the Olympics-qualified archer has once again started feeling at one with the sport after receiving the bow for home practice a few days ago.

Even though Bangladesh has resumed international flight operations on a limited scale from Tuesday after three months’ halt due to the coronavirus pandemic, a total of 52 foreign footballers of different clubs are still stuck in the country due to the closure of certain routes.

With the coronavirus situation in the country deteriorating, the Bangladesh Archery Federation (BAF) decided to backtrack on their earlier decision of restarting preparation for Tokyo Olympics from July 1. The federation has instead decided to distribute bows among the national archers to help them practice at home.

Rarely had any of Bangladesh’s professional football clubs taken the AFC-sanctioned club tournament very seriously, so it inevitably followed that the country’s outfits exited the competitions at the pre-qualifying or qualifying stages.

Footballers of the Bangladesh national team are slowly shrugging off the rust and warming up for individual training after the Asian Football Confederation recently announced World Cup qualifying fixtures in October and November.

Football failed to get any allocation in the national budget for the fiscal year of 2020-21 despite placing an ambitious request of Tk 40 crore allocation to the finance ministry as finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today placed a Tk 5,68000 crore national budget at the national parliament.

Apprehension over injustice from the mitigation committee for the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) delegates’ nomination ahead of the 2020 congress and polls was again brought to the fore as the existing committee of two affiliated bodies -- Dhaka Divisional Football Association (DFA) and Dilkusha SC -- alleged that the BFF secretariat bypassed them by giving away their nomination forms to BFF-preferred candidates.

Mitul Akter’s father came to her chamber at Regent Hospital in the capital’s Mirpur yesterday morning. He tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago.

Bangladesh Premier League champions Bashundhara Kings today announced the conclusion of its nearly two-year journey with Costa Rican footballer Daniel Colindres, citing inability to bear wages of the influential forward in off-season.

With the joint qualifiers of the 2022 World Cup and 2023 Asian Cup likely to resume in early October, Bangladesh head coach Jamie Day has designed a six-week preparation camp with 35 players ahead of the booters’ game against a visiting Afghanistan.

While most athletes have found themselves sitting at home for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, famed shooter Shakil Ahmed feels he has been benefited by the break in competitions as it gave him opportunity to work on fitness issues.

Fearing less support from sponsors in the post-Covid-19 era, most national sports federations are looking for more financial allocation from the government in the 2020-21 fiscal year, but the Ministry for Youth and Sports is apparently moving forward with plans to placea conventional sports budget in the parliamentary session.

Country’s sports-loving people were supposed to spend busy time now watching glowing performances of foreign and local players in events scheduled as part of birth centenary celebration of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but the coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on all the planning, depriving the spectators from the events.

They are used to battling it out on the field of play and have often succeed over their opponents by applying skill, technique and intelligence. Tales of the national age-group women’s football teams’ triumphson the international stage have become common in the country’s sports fraternity.

As the countrywide shutdown that lasted for more than two months to contain the spread of coronavirus came to a halt yesterday, different sectors in the country have reopened and sports are no exception.

Having gathered experience from Asian Junior and Girls Online Chess (Zone-3.2) competition held on Thursday, Bangladesh Chess Federation (BCF) is planning to organise an online chess tournament for the local players to keep them active amid the coronavirus pandemic.

After a two-month shutdown enforced to contain the spread of coronavirus, the government announced on Wednesday that the country will reopen on May 31 to keep the economy rolling. Major national sports federations want to follow the instructions to open their respective offices but also want to observe the situation before resuming sporting activities.

Terming Bangladesh Football Federation’s (BFF) decision to abandon the rest of the 2019-20 season as poor and an outcome of bad judgement, the national footballers have claimed to be in the dark regarding their contract renewals with clubs. The clubs have, however, demanded to retain the services of the same players in the new season.