Old-fashion sprinklers delay handover of BNS ground

The handover of the renovated ground of the Bangabandhu National Stadium is set to be deferred by a few more weeks after the joint inspection team of National Sports Council (NSC) and Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) yesterday found some shortcomings around the newly-laid drainage system.

The NSC spent nearly Tk 4.5 crore to renovate the ground, with facilities such as auto sprinklers to make the ground wet before the start games.

However, the NSC has installed old-fashioned sprinkler cannons -- usually used on artificial hockey turfs -- instead of pop-up sprinklers which are used for football pitches around the world. The BFF raised objection about the six sprinkler cannons, which may cause injuries to footballers.

The game's local governing body also deemed the concrete structure of the athletics turf as a threat to the players while the reserve water tank for making the ground wet is also small, according to BFF. In the joint inspection, the BFF also found seating capacity of the dressing rooms for domestic matches less than what is required.

"We have shortage of grounds and we are struggling to organise Independence Cup matches outside Dhaka due to the blockade. We have arranged a few matches at the Bashundhara Kings Arena and a few matches have been deferred," BFF vice-president Ataur Rahman Bhuiyan Manik said yesterday after the inspection with NSC director (planning and development) Shamsul Islam.

"We did not find any complex issues but what we found is a threat to the players, who can suffer injuries with objects such as RCC concrete of athletics track and water sprinklers which are not FIFA-or-AFC-standard. We have requested them to fix these issues with world standard or FIFA/AFC standard ones," Manik told reporters.

NSC director Shamsul Islam claimed that he had asked BFF to place its requirements two to three months ago, but the BFF did not respond.

"I am very much involved with the renovation and I visit the ground two to three days every week. We could have rectified this issues earlier had they raised questions that they are raising today. These things have not been completed today or two months ago; these were completed much before than that," said Shamsul, adding that they would need one more month to fix these issues.

The renovation work started in September 2021 and the ground was supposed be handed over in December this year, but the NSC is trying to handover early to the football federation following instruction from the sports ministry.