Anisur Rahman

The coronavirus may have kept sporting activities in the country halted for the last four months, bringing misery to athletes,

Most of the Bangladesh Football Federation’s (BFF’s) activities, apart from some official work, have remained halted since the government directed all national sports federations, associations and concerned authorities to suspend all events in light of the Covid-19 pandemic in mid-March. During this pandemic,

Professional football has resumed in different parts of the world in the new normal but it is uncertain when football will recommence in Bangladesh.

Karateka Al Amin Islam once used to follow movements and techniques of foreign karatekas, but now he is the one being followed by local karatekas and that is happening after his gold medal haul in the South Asian (SA) Games in Nepal last December.

Although Bangladesh Premier League clubs settled contract issues with foreign recruits in line with the FIFA-prescribed process of reaching mutual understandings, settlement of local players’ contracts have not been completed three-and-a-half months since the halt of the league.

The recent two-year contract extension of Bangladesh head coach Jamie Day is evidence of the Bangladesh Football Federation’s (BFF’s) satisfaction over the Englishman’s performance with the national team.

Without a bow and arrow for three months because of the coronavirus-induced halt in sports, Bangladesh’s top archer Ruman Sana had begun to feel that he had moved away from the discipline. But the Olympics-qualified archer has once again started feeling at one with the sport after receiving the bow for home practice a few days ago.

Even though Bangladesh has resumed international flight operations on a limited scale from Tuesday after three months’ halt due to the coronavirus pandemic, a total of 52 foreign footballers of different clubs are still stuck in the country due to the closure of certain routes.

With the coronavirus situation in the country deteriorating, the Bangladesh Archery Federation (BAF) decided to backtrack on their earlier decision of restarting preparation for Tokyo Olympics from July 1. The federation has instead decided to distribute bows among the national archers to help them practice at home.

Rarely had any of Bangladesh’s professional football clubs taken the AFC-sanctioned club tournament very seriously, so it inevitably followed that the country’s outfits exited the competitions at the pre-qualifying or qualifying stages.

Footballers of the Bangladesh national team are slowly shrugging off the rust and warming up for individual training after the Asian Football Confederation recently announced World Cup qualifying fixtures in October and November.

Football failed to get any allocation in the national budget for the fiscal year of 2020-21 despite placing an ambitious request of Tk 40 crore allocation to the finance ministry as finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today placed a Tk 5,68000 crore national budget at the national parliament.

Apprehension over injustice from the mitigation committee for the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) delegates’ nomination ahead of the 2020 congress and polls was again brought to the fore as the existing committee of two affiliated bodies -- Dhaka Divisional Football Association (DFA) and Dilkusha SC -- alleged that the BFF secretariat bypassed them by giving away their nomination forms to BFF-preferred candidates.

Mitul Akter’s father came to her chamber at Regent Hospital in the capital’s Mirpur yesterday morning. He tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago.

Bangladesh Premier League champions Bashundhara Kings today announced the conclusion of its nearly two-year journey with Costa Rican footballer Daniel Colindres, citing inability to bear wages of the influential forward in off-season.

With the joint qualifiers of the 2022 World Cup and 2023 Asian Cup likely to resume in early October, Bangladesh head coach Jamie Day has designed a six-week preparation camp with 35 players ahead of the booters’ game against a visiting Afghanistan.

While most athletes have found themselves sitting at home for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, famed shooter Shakil Ahmed feels he has been benefited by the break in competitions as it gave him opportunity to work on fitness issues.

Fearing less support from sponsors in the post-Covid-19 era, most national sports federations are looking for more financial allocation from the government in the 2020-21 fiscal year, but the Ministry for Youth and Sports is apparently moving forward with plans to placea conventional sports budget in the parliamentary session.

Country’s sports-loving people were supposed to spend busy time now watching glowing performances of foreign and local players in events scheduled as part of birth centenary celebration of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but the coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on all the planning, depriving the spectators from the events.

They are used to battling it out on the field of play and have often succeed over their opponents by applying skill, technique and intelligence. Tales of the national age-group women’s football teams’ triumphson the international stage have become common in the country’s sports fraternity.