BCB to turn Sher-e-Bangla Stadium as a quarantine facility center

In the last few days, many sporting events have been cancelled due to the outbreak of coronavirus. Several sports stadiums which are supposed to have been left deserted and empty in an attempt to avoid mass gatherings the stadiums across the globe. One such stadium which has fallen prey to this is the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) announced that it would be happy to offer the facilities of the stadium to the government in case it required it to set up quarantine facilities. With the growing number of cases of coronavirus patients across Bangladesh, the need of the hour is to provide medical facilities to the affected.

BCB offers the stadium for the treatment of affected people

Once the coronavirus affects a person, they are supposed to show symptoms. These symptoms are sore throat, cough and cold and fever. This is when the person needs to be isolated from the other people so as the virus doesn’t spread. Once the tests are run on the patient and they are proven to have coronavirus, they have to be kept in a quarantine facility in order to recover.

Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium is the world-class cricket ground in Dhaka‘s region of Mirpur and also houses the Mirpur Cricket Academy. The Bangladesh cricket board which calls the stadium as the home of cricket for Bangladesh has come forward and asked the government to use this stadium as the facility to create quarantine spaces for the affected people.

This follows after some of the State cricket boards in India also decided to allow the cricket stadiums to the government to set up quarantine centres. Recently BCCI President Sourav Ganguly offered the Eden Gardens in Kolkata to the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to set up medical facilities for the coronavirus affected patients. In addition to this, Hyderabad Cricket Association also offered their stadium to the Telangana government for the same purpose.

With no chances of cricket being played for the next few months, ICC has postponed all the events until June. The Dhaka Premier League which was supposed to be held during this time has been suspended. Until COVID-19 virus is dealt with, there is no engagement or events to be conducted at the Dhaka stadium.