Australia All Set To Tour Bangladesh In 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 11:28 AM
Cricket Australia’s (CA) chief executive James Sutherland has said Australia are more or less certain to visit Bangladesh for two Tests later this year unless some security issues arise. They had previously cancelled their tour in 2015 due to security concerns and also pulled out of Under-19 World Cup for the same.
However, England visited Bangladesh in 2016 and their series concluded without any problem. It might have given CA the boost to contemplate about the tour and Sutherland insisted that chances of playing a series in Bangladesh are quite high.
Speaking to ABC Radio, he said:“I think they’re quite high.What we saw at the end of last year was the England team tour Bangladesh. We certainly saw very strong security around the team. We actually sent our head of security, Sean Carroll, over to observe for seven or ten days, just to get a little bit of comfort on the systems and processes that were in place.
“Anything can happen between now and then, and we continue to monitor what’s happening in Bangladesh, but we work on the assumption that we’re going to play and we start to plan accordingly. But we certainly get a good deal of comfort from the way in which the security measures were put in place by the Bangladesh government, in conjunction with the cricket board over there. At the moment I would assume that we would be playing two Tests over there,” he added.
The team from Down Under last visited Bangladesh way back in 2006 for a full-fledged series when they won the Tests 2-0 and ODI series 3-0. After that, they played a three-match ODI series in 2011 which they won 3-0. And although admitting that the tour is on the cards, Sutherland claimed CA would not compromise with the security.
“I think it is important for us,” Sutherland said. “The fundamental for us is that safety comes first, the safety of our players and officials, and all of that. We’ll make those judgments accordingly. At the same time, we have made decisions in the past to postpone a tour of Bangladesh. We were also the only team not to send a team to the Under-19 World Cup, which was held in Bangladesh not long afterwards.
“Whilst there’s pressure for us to get back on the horse, so to speak, and to travel to Bangladesh, we won’t be compromising anything in our reviews and understanding, and getting to a level of satisfaction that the security measures are appropriate and at the level we need and want,” he concluded.