BAN vs SL | Series will go ahead as planned but vigilance will be increased, reveals BCB President

The first ODI between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in Dhaka on Sunday went ahead as planned despite one player testing positive hours before the commencement of the game, and Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hasan has asserted that the rest of the series will not be rescheduled and will go ahead as per the initial schedule.

Sri Lankan cricketers Isuru Udana and Shiran Fernando and bowling coach Chaminda Vaas returned positive results three hours before the commencement of the first game, but the duo of Udana and Vaas were then later found to be negative. However, despite Fernando testing positive, the first ODI was not cancelled or postponed, with the affected player instead isolated from the rest of the group. 

Hasan has asserted that there is no reason to panic, but has assured that vigilance will be increased.

"It can happen at times (someone getting positive) but there is a protocol in place... what we need to do and how many times we need to do the test to make sure that he is negative,” Cricbuzz quoted Hasan as saying.

"We are following the protocol and we feel nothing serious happened that we need to panic. But definitely we will increase our vigilance. He (Fernando) recovered from Covid very recently, the PCR may have detected the dead RNA from the virus, many individuals have it on them up to 28 days.”

Not just the hosts, but the visitors also have reaffirmed that they are happy with the protocols in place. Manuja Kariyapperuma, Sri Lanka's team manager, has insisted that there is no need to panic, and believes that it was just bad luck that the tests ended up showing a few false positives.

“Yes, we had two players, and one support staff member (that) tested positive, but two of them were declared negative after the second test so these things happen. There is a thing you know, false positive reports, and I think, it might have been that," said Manuja. 

"The facilities offered to us are good, that are more than adequate, and we made use of the facilities that were afforded to us, and looking forward to a very good series.”

The second ODI will be played on Tuesday, May 25, and Sri Lanka will head into the game 1-0 down in the series, having lost the first game by 33 runs.