United News of Bangladesh

The first phase of the Sheikh Kamal 2nd Bangladesh Youth Games 2023, organised by the Bangladesh Olympics Association (BOA), will begin Monday at the upazila level. After the completion of the first phase on January 10, the inter-district second phase of the competition will be held during January 16-22. The final phase of the competition will be held in Dhaka from February 26 to March 4. The boys and girls aged under 17, born after January 2, 2006, can participate in the competition by showing their birth certificates. Read: Sheikh Kamal 2nd Bangladesh Youth Games begins on January 2 With the new inclusion of cycling, gymnastics and rugby, the Bangladesh Youth Games will feature 24 disciplines of sports. Around 50,000 athletes took part in the first Youth Games in 21 disciplines of sports. An athlete can compete in a maximum of eight events – six in individual and two in team events – in the first phase of the Games. On December 23, BOA President and Chief of Army Staff General SM Shafiuddin Ahmed unveiled the Games' logo and mascot at a function in Dhaka.

Dhaka, Chattogram, Bandarban, and Kushtia DSAs topped their groups to reach the second round of the Exim Bank 33rd National Men's Handball Championship 2022 after their wins at the Shaheed Captain Mansur Ali National Handball Stadium in the capital Sunday. Dhaka came top of Group A, defeating Dinajpur by 46-18 goals after leading the first half 21-10. Chattogram topped Group B, beating Lalmonirhat 20-12 after dominating the first half 11-6. Read: Sheikh Kamal 2nd Bangladesh Youth Games begins on January 2 Bandarban defeated Narail 31-15 in their day's first match and later outplayed Joypurhat 26-4 in the day's second match to come top of Group C. Kushtia topped Group by defeating Cumilla 40-14 in the first match and beating Jamalpur 33-29 in the second match. In the day's other matches, Jamalpur outplayed Thakurgaon 28-12, Patuakhali defeated Khulna 25-11, and Cumilla beat Thakurgaon 23-11 at the same venue.

Sri Lanka clinched the Bangabandhu Women's International Beach Volleyball title after beating Nepal by straight 2-0 sets in the final at the Cox's Bazar Sea Beach on Thursday. Sri Lankan pair Depika and Shaturia beat Nepal's Kamala and Kopila by 21-11 and 21-11 points. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral M Shaheen Iqbal was the chief guest at the final and distributed the prizes. Read more: Bangabandhu Asian Central Zone U-23 Volleyball Championship begins The final match of the Bangabandhu Men's Asian Central Zone Beach Volleyball Championship between Sri Lanka and the Maldives will be held on Friday at the same venue. Seven countries – India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan and hosts Bangladesh – are taking part in the men's competition and four teams – Sri Lanka, Nepal, Uzbekistan and hosts Bangladesh – in the women's competition.  

Novak Djokovic has reiterated his earlier comments that he bears no hard feelings on his return to Australia after his visa cancellation and subsequent deportation in January ahead of the Australian Open tennis tournament. Djokovic was deported almost 12 months ago after arriving unvaccinated against COVID-19 at a time when the country was still subject to strict quarantine regulations and proof of vaccination. Those regulations have since been lifted and in November, the Australian government overturned the three-year ban that came with Djokovic’s deportation and granted him a visa to return for the Australian Open beginning Jan. 16. Djokovic arrived back in Australia on Tuesday ahead of the Adelaide International, where he is scheduled to play next week. Read more: Djokovic expected to be granted visa to compete in Australian Open “It’s great to be back in Australia,” he said Thursday. “It’s a country where I’ve had tremendous success in my career, particularly in Melbourne. It’s by far my most successful Grand Slam. I’m hoping that everything is going to be positive. Obviously (fan reaction) is not something that I can predict. “I’ll do my best to play good tennis and bring good emotions and good feelings to the crowd.” Djokovic said he still has difficulty forgetting his deportation. “Obviously what happened 12 months ago was not easy for me, for my family, team, anybody who is close to me. It’s obviously disappointing to leave the country like that,” he said. Read more: Double-fault: Visa revoked again, Djokovic faces deportation “You can’t forget those events. It’s one of these things that stays with you for I guess the rest of your life. It’s something that I’ve never experienced before and hopefully never again. But it is a valuable life experience for me and something that as I said will stay there, but I have to move on.” Djokovic has won the Australian Open a record nine times, including the last three times he played. Rafael Nadal won the 2022 title in Djokovic’s absence.

The first phase of the Sheikh Kamal 2nd Bangladesh Youth Games'.2023, organised by Bangladesh Olympics Association (BOA), begins on January 2 at the country's upazila level.    On completion of the first phase on January 10, the Inter-District 2nd phase of the meet will be held January 16-22 and the final phase of the meet will be held in Dhaka from February 26 to March 4. Read more: Bangladesh win Bangabandhu Asian Central Zone U-23 Volleyball with unbeaten record BOA Vice President and Chairman of the Games media committee Sheikh Bashir Ahmed Mamun disclosed the details of the meet at a press conference at the Dutch-Bangla Auditorium of BOA on Wednesday. Member Secretary of the Games Steering Committee Ashiqur Rahman Miku, Games Chief  Coordinator Brigadier General Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui and member secretary of the Media Committee Sirajuddin Mohammad Alamgir were also present at the press conference.    The Under-17 boys and girls, who was born after January 2, 2006 will be entitled to participate in the meet showing their birth certificates. Read more: 27th National Youth Hockey final Tuesday Some 60,000 athletes are expected to compete in 24 disciplines of sports with new inclusion Cycling, Gymnastics and Rugby in the ensuing Youth Game. In the first Youth Games, some 50,000 athletes took part in 21 disciplines of sports. An athlete will compete in maximum eight events--six individual and two team events--in the first phase of the meet. A strong and high-level organizing committee was formed with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the Chief Patron and Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal as the Chairman.  Earlier on December 23, BOA President and Army Chief General SM Shafiuddin Ahmed unveiled the games logo and mascot at a function at the Bangladesh Army Multi-Purpose Complex here.

Hosts Bangladesh clinched the Bangabandhu Asian Central Zone Under-23 Men's International Volleyball title, with an unbeaten record, beating Kyrgyzstan by 3-2 sets in the final in Mirpur on Monday. In the keenly contested final at the Shaheed Suhrawardy National Indoor Stadium, Bangladesh beat their rivals by 25-18, 15-25, 22-25, 25-19 and 18- 16 points. Sri Lanka finished third in the competition defeating Nepal by 3-2 sets in the morning.  Read: 27th National Youth Hockey final Tuesday Chief of Army Staff General SM Shafiuddin Ahmed was the chief guest at the final and handed over the trophies. Bangladesh Volleyball Federation General Secretary Ashiqur Rahman Miku handed out the best player award to Kaviska of Sri Lanka.  Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Bangladesh took part in the competition.

The final of the Al Arafah Islami Bank 27th National Youth Hockey Championship 2022 will be held on Tuesday at the Maulana Bhashani National Hockey Stadium in the capital. Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan (BKSP) will face Rajshahi District in the title-decider, which will kick off at 3pm. Read: National Athletics: Army lead medal table with 15 golds, 11 silvers, 13 bronzes Air Chief Marshal Shaikh Abdul Hannan, chief of air staff of Bangladesh Air Force and president of the Bangladesh Hockey Federation, will watch the final as chief guest. Al Arafah Islami Bank acting managing director SM Zafar will be present. Dinajpur District finished third in the championship beating Natore District 5-0 in the third place match last Tuesday. Fifty-seven teams took part in the first phase of the meet in nine zonal venues and later 18 qualified teams competed in the final phase in Dhaka.  

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has said sports have brightened Bangladesh's image. Sports can play a vital role in enhancing global connectivity, he added. "Sports and cultural activities are doing a great job keeping young people creative and thoughtful," he said while speaking at the closing ceremony of the 5th Hamidur Rahman National Youth Shooting Championship 2022 organised by the Bangladesh Shooting Sport Federation and sponsored by Hamid Group in Dhaka on Sunday. "Shooting has made good progress. Promising shooters can emerge if the shooting federation takes initiative to spread the game across the country instead of focusing on Dhaka," Nasrul added. Around 105 contestants – 65 boys and 40 girls from 23 rifle and shooting clubs of the country – participated in the competition. BKSP Shooting Club became the champions and Comilla Rifle Club runner-ups. Bangladesh Shooting Sport Federation President Lieutenant General Ataul Hakim Sarwar Hasan presided over the event and Bangladesh Olympic Association Secretary General Syed Shahed Reza and Bangladesh Shooting Sport Federation Secretary General Istekhabul Hamid spoke on the occasion.  

Army had a clear lead in the Bangabandhu 46th National Athletics Championships 2022 medal table after securing 15 gold, 11 silver and 13 bronze medals at the end of day two Saturday. At the Bangladesh Army Stadium in Banani, the second-placed Navy collected 11 gold, 15 silver and eight bronze medals. Bangladesh Ansar and VDP, Prison Directorate (Bangladesh Jail) remained in third place with one gold, one silver and two bronze medals each. Out of 40 events of the three-day national competition, 28 were decided in the first two days, featuring five new national records.   Three national records were made today – all by Navy women's athletes in the discus throw, 50000-metre run and 3000-metre run. Zafrin Akter made the day's first record in the women's discus throw covering a distance of 43.49 meters to break the 29-year-old event's record of 42.90 metres made by Josna Afroz in 1993. Read more: Bangabandhu National Athletics begins on Friday Rinki Biswas made the day's second record in the women's 5,000-metre run with a timing of 19:41.40 seconds to improve her previous record of 19: 57.50 seconds in the event. Shamsun Nahar Ratna set the day's third record in the 3,000-metre run with a timing of 10:39.55 seconds to break the event's record of 10:43.30 seconds made by Rinki Biswas in 2021.

The unspoken deal between sports fans and their favorite teams and players has been, in theory: Sure, there are billions of dollars being thrown around, but at the core, sports are supposed to be fun and games, a never-ending menu of two- or three-hour escapes into a land of winners and losers where nobody really gets hurt. For all but the most starry-eyed fanatics, that worldview unraveled in 2022 — much as it did the year before, the year before that, and the year before that, and so on. A more accurate assessment might be that sports are not so much an escape from the world’s problems as simply another window into them. Hardly a day passed in 2022 when a headline running across the ticker on ESPN would’ve been every bit as fitting on CNN or Fox Business or, in some cases, on NBC’s “Dateline.” The intersection between sports and real life ranged from toxic workplace environments, alleged sexual misconduct, sportswashing, cryptocurrency, transgender sports and the COVID-19 pandemic — plus a sprinkling of doping, geopolitics, hypocrisy and corruption. The AP Sports Story of the Year was about a basketball player, Brittney Griner, whose plan to travel to Russia to play in the offseason ended up as a high-stakes diplomatic battle between the United States and Russia. Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison for possessing a small amount of hashish oil, which is illegal in Russia. Months of tense negotiations ensued. Ultimately, Griner was released, and the sign-off for both countries’ negotiating teams came from none other than Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. Putin, who, as much as any world leader, has tried to use sports to project his country’s strength, began the year front-and-center with Chinese premier Xi Jinping, as the autocrats used the start of the Beijing Olympics to highlight their partnership on the world stage. Shortly after those Games, Russia invaded Ukraine, leaving the global sports community to wrestle with whether Russian athletes should be able to compete in international events, sometimes head-to-head against athletes from the country under siege. Read more: What is ‘One Love’ armband and why is FIFA against it in World Cup 2022? “I think it’s fairly simple,” said Sebastian Coe, the head of World Athletics, when asked in November what it would take to see a Russian in a track meet anytime soon. “Get out of Ukraine.” As the year closed and the war remained far from a conclusion, Coe was hardly in the majority among world sports leaders. Many of those leaders, meanwhile, had brought their athletes home safely from China, where the government shuffled all 2,800 competitors and thousands more officials and media in and out of the country for the Beijing Games without suffering a major COVID-19 outbreak. It happened thanks to the country’s draconian, opaque testing procedures and cordoned-off Olympic venues, all of which served to tamp down any notion of dissent or free speech in a land that doesn’t view any of that kindly. The COVID restrictions helped China ultimately prove that it could pull off a major worldwide event in the midst of the pandemic — even if the festivities fell short of the global outpouring of peace and love that the Olympics so desperately wants to be. “It’s kinda like sports prison,” Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris said. China was hardly the only country hoping to use sports for air of legitimacy — or to whitewash its own perceived sins. The creation of the breakaway LIV Golf tour took up virtually all the oxygen in that sport, as much for disrupting the status quo as for being bankrolled by a wealth fund backed by Saudi Arabian leaders who detractors said had blood on their hands. For a time, the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi citizenship of the 9/11 terrorist attackers drowned out birdies, bogeys and Tiger Woods’ health as the biggest talking points in golf. Later in the year, misgivings about holding soccer’s World Cup in Qatar were placed under a similar microscope. The country’s poor treatment of migrant workers and members of the LGBTQ community, to say nothing of the alleged corruption involved in awarding the tournament to a kingdom with no soccer roots, overshadowed the run-up to a tournament that nevertheless concluded with Argentina winning one of the most thrilling soccer matches ever. While the World Cup was unfolding, the cryptocurrency world was melting down. The bankruptcy of multibillion-dollar crypto exchange firm FTX and the arrest of its owner, Sam Bankman-Fried, had sports connections everywhere. Tom Brady and Steph Curry were pitchmen for the company, and FTX’s name quickly came off the arena where the Miami Heat played. Read more: FIFA’s punishment threat forces European team captains to abandon ‘One Love’ armbands Despite that, 2022 was the year that crypto officially became entrenched in sports, for better or worse, via sponsorships of leagues, endorsement deals by athletes and, of course, crypto-backed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are becoming a new status symbol of sports stars, who have, for decades, had a knack for inducing fans to buy what they buy and wear what they wear. “It would make sense for these (crypto) companies to work with a sports team or a sports celebrity because there’s an emotional attachment that goes along with that partnership,” said Brandon Brown, who teaches sports and business at New York University’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport. In basketball, Griner’s was hardly the only story that strayed far outside the lines. The year was filled with reports about the rot that infiltrated the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, whose owner, Robert Sarver, was pressured into selling the team after the details emerged. Employees documented years of abuse and toxic workplace culture that included frequent disrespect of women and use of racially inappropriate language. Another owner behaving badly: Daniel Snyder of the NFL’s Washington Commanders. Snyder found himself accused by a congressional committee of standing in the way of investigations about sexual harassment and misconduct that had allegedly been prevalent throughout the organization for two decades. Part of the investigation suggested the franchise was receiving help from the NFL itself in slowing down investigations. It’s a claim the NFL has denied, while pointing to its own outside probes into conditions that existed on Snyder’s team. In many corners, the saga reflected poorly on a league that has long been trying to grow its female fan base. Not helping was the ongoing story of one of the league’s best quarterbacks, Deshaun Watson, who, in 2022, reached settlements with 23 women who accused him of sexual misconduct while he was getting massages. He served an 11-game suspension that ended just in time for the holidays. He has not admitted guilt. But perhaps the single issue that underscored the inseparable bond between sports and all it touches was the furor over the future of transgender athletes. It is among society’s most complex topics, one steeped in a mix of physiological science, common sense, human decency and, yes, politics — and one that has left different sides of the debate at seemingly intractable loggerheads. The international swimming federation, in the wake of Penn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ title at the NCAA championships, was among a number of global sports entities that wrote, or updated, guidelines in 2022 in an attempt to bring clarity. So did legislatures in no fewer than 18 states across the U.S. One goal, said Olympic swimming champion Donna de Varona, an outspoken advocate in the transgender debate, should be to find some nuance in both the debate and the policymaking. “But nobody wants nuances,” she conceded. Such is the bottom line in sports, the place where fans go not for shades of grey, but, rather, to see wins and losses neatly summed up in black and white. What became clear as ever in 2022 is how far past the scoreboard we have to look to see the true outcomes of the games.