The Regional Cricket Association has been established thanks to a constitutional revision that the Bangladesh Cricket Board ultimately made. At the annual general meeting of the board held in a city hotel, the Board Councillors, who have voting rights in the election, authorized the required amendments.
After being elected for the first time in 2013, BCB President Nazmul Hasan pledged to establish the RCA. In 2017, after winning reelection, he made the same pledge. But it wasn’t until he was nine years into his third tenure that the Regional Cricket Association really started to take shape.
Regional Cricket Association is thought to be a key step in decentralizing cricket at the grassroots and administrative levels, which will have a big impact on the overall development of the sport. When Eddie Barlow led Bangladesh’s coaching staff from 1999–2000, he pioneered the idea in an effort to advance cricket in the nation. He contributed to the creation and implementation of the programs that led to the nation’s formal Test status. At the same time, he also promoted the RCA’s creation.
Seven associations were proposed in the draft in order to give each region the tools they would need to function autonomously. Despite the fact that the notion was first proposed in 2000, nothing significant happened until the Bangladesh Cricket Board councilors opted to ratify the adjustment that was necessary to their constitution in order to get the RCA functioning.
The committee of seven in the RCA will consist of the directors and councilors from the divisions of Dhaka, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Chattogram, Khulna, Rangpur, and Barisal, while the division of Mymensingh would be incorporated as part of Dhaka.
“We don’t have any barrier to form the RCA from now onwards. To date, we have controlled everything from Dhaka while we were going to different divisions from Dhaka, and honestly speaking, we had very little control at the district level. But now after Regional Cricket Association activities start we hope that we can do much better in this regard (taking cricket to the grassroots level). We hope that before our next board meeting we can start the activities of RCA.” Nazmul spoke to reporters on Tuesday following the AGM (July 19).
