The ‘A’ team quandary

"Whenever teams like the West Indies, Sri Lanka [or others] tour Bangladesh for international series, we have them play [practice tour matches] against our 'A' squad. Hence, if you do the math, you can see that they are getting a lot of practice matches through this process," clarified Akram Khan, chairman of the Bangladesh Cricket Board's (BCB's) cricket operations committee, in response to questions regarding the inactivity of the Bangladesh A Team over the years.

Questions regarding Bangladesh having a properly active A Team -- a feature that any functioning cricket board must have -- were raised when BCB president Nazmul Hassan announced the formation of a shadow national cricket team named 'Bangladesh Tigers' earlier this month. It was touted as a platform for players who would be ready to spring into national-team action at any given moment.

However, the shadow national team caused only confusion as it is quite similar to what the A team is intended to do. The purpose of the shadow national team even left Akram perplexed, with him terming it 'unclear'.

The confusion was justified. What could a shadow national team bring to the table when the Bangladesh A team, who were built to serve a similar purpose, are mostly overlooked and don't seem to have any proper planning. The planned tours for the Bangladesh A team have been irregular and, instead of upcoming prospects, they involve many national team regulars.

"This is a wrong assumption from your [media's] side. You say there have not been any activities from the Bangladesh A team. During this Covid period, there have not been many cricketing activities. It's not like only Bangladesh's A team has not had activities. We [Bangladesh A] went to Sri Lanka on our last tour in 2019 [in September-October]. After that everything was halted due to coronavirus and since then we have not been able to make any plans for our age-level or even HP [High Performance] squads," Akram insisted.

He also listed how many tours Bangladesh A had been on in the past few years.

"In the past 8-9 years, we arranged around 21 series -- eight at home and 13 away. We were not able to arrange two series due to Covid-19. But aside from that, we had Bangladesh A team play around 120 matches -- 45 longer-version games and 75 limited-overs games. I think that's a lot," added Akram.

While the Bangladesh A team might have numerous matches under their belt over the years, the question whether those series actually fulfilled the purpose of a typical 'A' squad still remains. Even in their latest tour of Sri Lanka for two unofficial Tests and three unofficial ODIs in 2019, the Test squad was led by current national team Test skipper Mominul Haque while both Test and ODI squads featured a number of national team regulars like Mehedi Hasan Miraz, Mohammad Mithun, Ebadot Hossain and Abu Jayed.

However, after questions were recently raised regarding the inactivity of the Bangladesh A team and the logic behind the formation of a shadow national team despite the existence of an A team, the BCB today provided details about the A team's next assignment.

"We have been trying to send our 'A' team on a tour to Sri Lanka for the past 4-5 months. Recently they agreed to our proposal and confirmed. They have given us a date in November. If everything goes according to plan then we are going to arrange a tour for the Bangladesh 'A' squad," added Akram.