The ongoing crisis between the Bangladesh players and their cricket board has taken a new turn on Monday following a few controversial comments made by Nazmul Hasan Papon, the president of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). In an exclusive interview with “Prothom Alo”, Hasan has alleged that there has been constant attempts to sabotage Bangladesh’s upcoming tour of India and he believes despite players calling off their recent strike after BCB agreed to their 11-point demands, some of the top cricketers may not travel to India, citing various excuses.
“You people [media] haven’t yet seen anything about the India tour. Just wait and watch. If I am saying that I had specific information that this was a conspiracy to sabotage India tour, then you should believe me,” Hasan said.
While explaining his point of view further, he has provided the example of Tamim Iqbal, who has already pulled himself out of the upcoming tour citing his wife’s delivery as a reason. However, according to Hasan, initially he agreed to skip only the Kolkata Test, not the entire tour.
“Tamim had initially told me that he will only skip the second Test [at Eden Gardens from November 22-26] for the birth of his second child. However after the meeting with players, Tamim comes to my room and said, he wants to opt out of whole tour. I asked him ‘why so?’ but he simply said he won’t go,” the BCB president revealed to the Bengali daily.
Bangladesh are scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on October 30 and the first T20I of the tour will be played on November 3.
“Now after this, I won’t be surprised if I find that someone else pulls out at the eleventh hour when we would be left with no other options. I have called Shakib to have a chat. Now if he also pulls out, where do I even find a captain? I might have to change whole combination. What do I even do with these players,” he said.
Hasan now believes that the board should have taken an assurance from the players regarding their participation in the future assignments before agreeing to their demands.
“I still can’t believe it. I speak to them everyday. They didn’t even intimate me before calling a strike. I feel that it was a mistake on my part to have agreed to their demands. I should have never done that,” he said.
“I should have told the players, ‘Unless you call off strike, we will not sit with you guys across the negotiation table’. Speaking to various member boards, I felt that this should have been our approach but the media also created pressure on us,” the top boss added further.
During their second bilateral tour of India, Bangladesh are scheduled to play three T20Is in Delhi, Rajkot and Nagpur followed by two Tests in Indore and Kolkata. Furthermore, there has been a formal request from the BCCI to the Bangladesh board to play the Kolkata Test under lights. If Hasan’s board agrees to this proposal, it will be the first-ever pink-ball Test match in India.
(With inputs from PTI)