PHOTO: BCB

SPORTS REPORTER

In less than five months, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Aminul Islam Bulbul has led two silver jubilee celebrations -- 25th anniversary of Test status on June 26 and 25 years of the country’s inaugural Test match on Monday -- and decentralization has been an important theme at both events.

The BCB celebrated the latest jubilee in the presence of several members of the historic first Test squad with a commemorative cake-cutting ceremony at a city hotel.

During the previous anniversary in June, the board had held several events across the country, including an Under-12 six-a-side tournament at divisional cities, before a concluding event in Dhaka.

This time, even though the celebrations themselves got a bit more centralised with only one conference in Dhaka, decentralisation remained a central theme.

The ceremony on Monday also marked the conclusion of the Bangladesh Cricket Conference 2025 -- a two-day event that served as the launching pad for the board’s new “Connect and Grow” initiative, which brought councillors, district sports officials, district coaches, and female entrepreneurs from all districts to discuss a roadmap for decentralisation.

However, significant questions linger about how -- and whether -- the plans discussed here will ever materialise.

The push to strengthen regional structures is not new. The concept of Regional Cricket Associations was first raised in the 2000 BCB AGM, included in the board’s constitution in 2017, and even given a draft framework in 2021. Yet, after 25 years of Test cricket, the idea remains stalled — and its future uncertain.

For many stakeholders in cricket, the most disappointing failure over these years is the board’s inability to decentralise the sport and build a sustainable regional structure -- an issue spanning multiple administrations.

Bulbul openly acknowledged this shortcoming during the event, but while he has spoken repeatedly about establishing regional cricket since joining the board in May, his vision still appears distant. His proposal to form divisional and district teams with their own player pools remains largely theoretical under the current setup.

Advisor to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Asif Mahmud, praised the initiative but cautioned that the real test lies in its follow-through.

After a quarter century in Test cricket, Bangladesh’s struggles on the field mirrors its off the field failures and in a system where long-promised reforms repeatedly fail to translate into meaningful progress and decentralisation remains aloof, the final output is almost bound to remain poor.