BCB decides to explore untapped cricket talents in hills

“The board is mulling ways to onboard more players from ethnic minority communities into mainstream cricket system,” BCB director Sirajuddin Mohammad Alamgir said.

Alamgir, a strong advocate of the initiative, said the “biggest obstacle is not lack of their athletic ability but a lack of opportunity” and so the country's cricket structure must go beyond waiting for talented players from the hills to make their way on their own to established cricket centers.

“Instead, the system needs to take the game to them as it's not possible for them to overcome all hurdles to come to the city and play cricket,” he said.

BCB officials said their proposals include creating residential facilities in Chattogram, expanding training opportunities and providing financial support to promising players from remote areas of the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT) to enable them to develop their skills in a professional environment

Cricket experts said children in Rangamati, Bandarban and Khagrachhari hill districts often grow up in rugged terrain, geographic isolation having limited access to sports facilities while reaching a cricket ground often emerge as a major challenge for them.

Former BCB coach in Rangamati Mohitosh Dewan, himself a member of a minority ethnic community in the hills, knows that reality well.

“It's extremely tough to manage playing cricket in the hill tracts. When life is undeniably tough, cricket is a luxury there,” Dewan said.

He said young players often need to overcome significant logistical difficulties simply to reach a field and in most cases they firstly need to cross a chain of hills and waterlogged areas before reaching a cricket field.

Dewan said the geographic feature of the CHT made cricket fundamentally different from some other sports which gained popularity among ethnic communities.
“The physical endurance developed by life in the hills has helped produce successful athletes in football, hockey and other disciplines, but cricket requires regular access to pitches, equipment, coaching and organized competition,” Dewan said.

Ethnic athletes have become prominent in several sports, with footballers such as Rituparna Chakma and Monika Chakma playing important roles in Bangladesh women's football while cricket, by contrast, so far produced only a handful of ethnic players in the country's organised system.

Champa Chakma became the first ethnic cricketer to represent Bangladesh women's cricket and later pursued a career as an umpire. Mohitosh Dewan played in the Dhaka Premier League in the 1990s before moving into coaching.

More recently, Anik Deb Barman and Leky Chakma have emerged through the BCB's age-group structure.

Their progress has given the BCB something which was missing for decades displaying visible examples that players from ethnic communities can enter the national cricket pathway if they are given the opportunity.

Anik, a 6-foot-3-inch Tripura fast bowler from Habiganj, has already reached Bangladesh's Under-19 preliminary setup. His route into cricket depicts the importance of access.

“We have 40 families in our community in the village. No one played cricket there and hardly have any interest in this sport,” Anik said.

He only received a serious opportunity after moving to Habiganj town, where a coach noticed him playing at school and helped pace his development.

Leky's journey was even more difficult as she had to overcome family resistance to her ambitions and travel several kilometres to attend training sessions.

Her breakthrough came through a district-level camp in Rangamati organized with the support of the local cricket association.

Champa, who was involved in the camp, immediately recognized her potential.

“There were 40 players in the camp. Leky showed her potential to be the next cricketer from the hill tracts. So I picked her and informed the management about her ability,” Champa said.

Leky subsequently went through rigorous training to make herself available for the Under-19 level.

Her progress is significant not only because of what it means for her career, but also because the BCB sees the possibility of creating a chain reaction -- one successful player could inspire many others to consider cricket.

Alamgir believes the absence of such a figure has been one of the reasons cricket has struggled to develop in the hills.

“You need a hero in our locality to embrace cricket. For hill tracts people, there is no hero,” he said.

He said a successful national-level player from an ethnic community could become a powerful source of inspiration for children who currently saw little connection between their communities and elite cricket.

But, he said, creating that role model will require more than identifying talented youngsters and the BCB must also address the economic realities as many children naturally gravitate towards sports that require less financial investment because of their circumstances in the hills.

“They are interested in less-costly games since they live under the poverty line. Daily realities of life in the hill tracts are very different from those in urban areas,” Alamgir said adding BCB now wanted to combine training with practical support for the region.

Alamgir proposed using existing facilities in Chattogram to establish a dormitory where promising young cricketers from remote communities could stay and train. He also wants the board to explore financial assistance.

“We can even give some a salary so that they can be motivated to play cricket. If we can prepare cricketers in this way from the hill tracts, there will be a revolution there,” he said.

The concept, however, is not entirely new as during his time at the Bangladesh Olympic Association, he proposed establishing a sports centre of excellence in the hill tracts, but the project never materialized.

BCB is now looks at a more targeted approach for cricket.

The board also recognises that physical strength alone cannot take a player to the top since cricket demands technical ability, tactical understanding and sustained coaching.

“T20 cricket is all about power” is a common perception but power alone is insufficient without the necessary skills. Intensive training is essential, Alamgir said.

That makes the development of ethnic cricket a long-term project rather than a short-term talent hunt.

BCB's challenge is to create a system through which children in remote communities can be identified early, given access to coaching and equipment, and then connected to the established age-group structure.

The emergence of Champa, Anik and Leky has demonstrated that the pathway is possible. The next step is to make it less dependent on individual circumstances and more accessible to an entire generation.

The hills have already produced athletes capable of competing at the highest levels in other sports, which cricket has lacked but BCB now wants to build that bridge.

For the board, the objective is clear -- find the talent, remove the barriers and give ethnic communities a genuine route into mainstream cricket, reports BSS.