Bangladesh's three-Test tour of Sri Lanka has been postponed yet again following a stalemate between the BCB and the SLC over quarantine requirements, with weeks of negotiation failing to yield an agreement between the two boards. The length of the quarantine, which the Sri Lankan health authorities had insisted be 14 days, with the players' movement strictly limited to their hotel rooms, was the main proposal the Bangladesh board refused to agree with.

"Any tourist who is entering Sri Lanka has to abide by this rule [of 14 days in quarantine]," Nazmul Hassan, the BCB president, said on Monday. "They [the SLC] have told us that they couldn't do anything about this point [about quarantine]. We have informed them that we have to reschedule the tour to a time when things will improve."

The Sri Lankan health authorities' insistence on a 14-day quarantine was partly because Covid-19 is understood to be spreading in Bangladesh, and some high-profile members of the potential squad had also tested positive for the virus. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, has had minimal spread of the virus for the last few months, and life has largely returned to normal, aside from tight controls at the border.

One SLC official expressed mild frustration at the government, calling health authorities "completely inflexible", but also suggested both the authorities and SLC were wary of being blamed for a potential outbreak via the tour. Another SLC official also said the BCB had at one point asked for a three-day quarantine, which the official described as "ridiculous".

Two weeks ago, Hassan had said that Bangladesh won't go ahead with the tour if the 14-day quarantine was put in place. Soon afterwards, Sri Lanka's sports minister Namal Rajapaksa had said that he asked the SLC to consult with the country's Covid-19 task force to reconsider the matter. The SLC then proposed to their health authorities that the Bangladesh touring party do the two-week quarantine split between the two countries, but it wasn't agreed upon.

More to follow...