Tamim Iqbal to visit BCCI Centre of Excellence as Bangladesh eyes high-performance revamp

Even as uncertainty continues to surround India’s proposed white-ball tour of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Tamim Iqbal is scheduled to visit the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru on Saturday as part of the board’s long-term plans to strengthen its high-performance infrastructure.

Tamim, who is in India on a personal visit, is expected to travel to Bengaluru along with a few BCB directors for a detailed tour of the state-of-the-art facility.

While the visit’s timing coincides with the pending India tour, sources told Sportstar that the two developments are unrelated.

The BCB has been working on plans to establish a dedicated Centre of Excellence in Dhaka, and the visit aims to understand how India’s premier cricket facility has been conceptualised, built and operated.

The delegation is expected to interact with officials at the CoE and meet its director, VVS Laxman, to gain insights into the different departments that function under one roof, from elite player development and sports science to biomechanics, rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, analytics and age-group programmes.

Moving on from the traditional National Cricket Academy, the Centre of Excellence was inaugurated by the BCCI a couple of years back.

Since then, it has become the hub of Indian cricket’s high-performance programme. Spread across a sprawling campus on the outskirts of Bengaluru, it houses multiple indoor and outdoor practice wickets, cutting-edge training facilities, rehabilitation units, residential accommodation and specialised labs catering to men’s, women’s and junior cricketers.

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For Bangladesh, which has been looking to modernise its cricket infrastructure over the last few years, the visit offers an opportunity to study one of the most advanced cricket training facilities in the world. The BCB has been keen to move towards a centralised high-performance ecosystem instead of operating different programmes from separate venues.

The visit also underlines the cricketing ties between the two boards despite the uncertainty surrounding bilateral engagements.

India is scheduled to tour Bangladesh for a white-ball series in September, but the fate of that assignment remains subject to clearance from the Government of India amid the prevailing diplomatic situation. The BCCI has maintained that any decision on the tour will be taken only after receiving the necessary government approval.

According to local media, Tamim recently met with high-ranking Bangladesh government officials to request that they initiate government-level communication to reassure their Indian counterparts that Bangladesh is ready to host India’s tour.

Published on Jul 31, 2026