Women' Cricket In Bangladesh

Start Of A New Era:

Bangladesh cricket has made a significant step forward by launching the first ever National Women Cricket Championship in 2007. This is also the first time in our history when women cricketers will play in any form of domestic cricket. While most of the test playing nations are regularly playing female versions of Test and One Day series, we do not even have a national women's cricket team. Limited efforts were taken to build a national team in the past, but an international side has never represented Bangladesh due mainly to lack of interest from the organizers on top of cultural difficulties.

Veteran cricket coach Altaf Hossain has been making hard and solitary effort to promote women’s cricket for the last few years. Bangladesh was invited in November 2005 to take part in the second Women’s Asia Cup and around 20 cricketers were selected for a camp under the supervision of coach Altaf Hossain. After a few weeks of camping, Bangladesh finally turned down the invitation fearing that the team’s performance would not be competitive enough.

In the history book, the first recorded women’s cricket match was held in 1745 and the first match between two teams representing counties was in 1811 in London. Women's Test cricket has been played since December 1934. The International Women's Cricket Council was formed in 1958 to coordinate women's cricket which was officially integrated with International Cricket Council in 2005 after the eighth Women’s World Cup in South Africa which was won by Australia. Following women cricket teams have been awarded Test status by International Cricket Council to date: Australia, England, India , Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa , Sri Lanka and West Indies.