Bangladesh’s economy is expected to grow by 6.5 percent in this financial year, powered by better-than-expected exports and money sent home by workers abroad, the Asian Development Bank forecast Monday. At a press briefing to mark the release of the economic update on the country, head of ADB’s Bangladesh mission Hua Du praised the opposition Awami League’s decision to join the parliament and termed it ‘a good sign for the country’s economy’.

“Despite the recent fuel price increases, the subsidy remains very high, about $ 520 million or 0.8 percent of GDP,” the report said, adding that losses of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) would also remain high, estimated at $ 380 million in this fiscal.

“We are very hopeful that the country would be able to achieve the targeted GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate as some sectors including agriculture, industry and service have been performing well and showing positive trends,” said the country director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Hua Du.

A lot of dim-witted reasons were given by ICC while giving the test status to Bangladesh. The main raison d’être was “People in Bangladesh are crazy about cricket like the other sub-continent Nations”. It is true, the general public in Bangladesh loves cricket like anything but that was not the sufficient reason for it to give it the test status. Mr Shidu was not wrong when he said a premature baby is born in cricket world. Bangladesh is playing International level competitions for almost one decade but there has been no improvement in the standard of their game. Except very few rare wins they were never been able to give a good fight to the opposition. Their recent performance in ICC Championship trophy tells the whole story of their improvement through all these years. A score of 265+ against Sri Lanka doesn’t mean they have a good batting line up. Any counties 2nd or 3rd tier team can make such a score once in a while. True they have few talented batsman in their team like Aftab Ahemad , Ashrful & others . These players can be made world class by proper training & guidance but not by just giving them a chance to play against a McGrath or a Shohaib. ICC should have a rational vision in promoting cricket. Just by giving chances to the minnows in big events will not serve any purpose. ICC should try to make sure that the players from counties like Bangladesh & Zimbabwe get enough exposure before playing for their nation. It can never happen just by playing the domestic matches in their respective countries. Ashraful can never get a chance to face a bowler of Lee’s speed playing in Bangladesh. All the top cricket playing nations should share this responsibility under the guidance of ICC. ICC can come up with a proposal like “every test playing nation (of course except Bangladesh) should have few foreign players in their domestic competition”. It will also help players to adapt themselves in different conditions. ICC need to take few pioneering initiatives else we will never see any improvement in the standard of cricket played in Bangladesh, Kenya or Zimbabwe.