British Council sponsors Carnival of Cricket

The British Council, in conjunction with the Bangladesh Cricket Board, has launched a week-long Cricket Carnival at the at the BKSP Sports Academy near Dhaka. The event, it is hoped, will foster leadership qualities among the nation's young cricketers, and heighten the communication and cultural exchanges between Britain and Bangladesh.

"The event will build better relations between two organisations, who have been working together for three years," Khondokar Jamiluddin, the vice-chairman of the BCB development committee, told The Daily Star. The British Council was represented by the director, Dr June Rollinson, who added that it was involved in similar sports programmes throughout the world, particularly in Africa.

The Council has already helped the development of Bangladesh cricket by arranging for ten promising young players to take part in the Surrey League. In return, six young Englishmen from the MCC's Young Cricketers' Programme - Andrew Colquhoun, Steven Coleman, Simon Roberts, Paul Radley, Jonkheer van Bange and Shaun O'Brien -will also be taking part in the week's festivities. They will each be joining one of the six divisional teams - Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet - as well as experiencing life as a developing cricketer in Bangladesh.

The teams, all including seven local players from the U-17 and U-19 development squads, have been picked by divisional coaches, but the cricketers will be on their own during the competition. "There will be no coaches to guide them and the players will be responsible for all their acts and decisions," said BCB's Sri Lankan official Carlton Bernadas. "They will even have to pick a substitute player in case a player is injured."

When not taking part in matches, the cricketers will be involved in various community projects, from visiting a centre for the rehabilitation of the paralysed, and a junior clinic for girls' cricket.