MUMBAI: After helping Afghanistan Cricket through various initiatives, the BCCI is looking to help Nepal Cricket grow as well.TOI has learnt that Nepal’s senior cricket team is set to travel to India for training at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru from July 21 to August 3. “Nepal Cricket has selected 20 players to undergo training at National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru as preparation for the upcoming T20 World Cup Qualifiers (from Oct 1-17),” a source told TOI.Last year too, before the T20 World Cup in the United States & West Indies in June, the senior national team of Nepal trained at the BCCI’s CoE in Bengaluru and played some warm-up games before leaving for the US.“We are extremely grateful to the BCCI, Jay Shah (ICC chairman), and the Indian embassy in Nepal for extending all possible help to Nepal cricket. Almost all our age group teams-men & women-have trained in India before departing for big tournaments. Right now too, some of our national team cricketers are training in Bhopal,” Chatur Bahadur Chand, the president of the Nepal Cricket Association, told TOI from Kathmandu on Saturday.“We will always back the BCCI in all its initiatives,” he added.Last year, Bahadur met the then BCCI secretary Jay Shah in the national capital on the sidelines of a WPL meeting, with a request of helping the budding cricketers of his country get quality match practice and access to infrastructure, which is difficult to arrange in the Himalayan nation.
