Bangladesh's tour of Pakistan has been postponed by at least four
weeks at the eleventh (twelfth may be more appropriate) hour. The High
Court questioned the legality of the Bangladesh Cricket Board's (BCB)
decision to send the national team to a strife-torn country where
international teams have not visited since the March 2009 militant
attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore.
This brings up the
very real possibility that the tour will not go ahead at all. It must be
understood and appreciated that Bangladesh is not averse to touring
Pakistan as far as the country or its cricketing tradition goes. As a
young cricketing nation, strong cricketing ties with older nations are
the lifeblood of growth, and it is such a tie that was being fostered
with Pakistan before this episode. But due to factors outside cricket's
sphere of influence Pakistan is not a safe country to tour at present.
It is unfortunate that cricket-crazy Pakistanis will not be able to see
their nation finally emerge from cricketing isolation, but that is
through no fault of Bangladesh's cricketers whose security will be at
risk if the tour goes ahead. The plain truth is that this situation was
engineered by the ambitions of one man.
BCB president Mustafa
Kamal has been on a mission to curry favour with the Pakistan Cricket
Board (PCB) to secure an International Cricket Council (ICC)
vice-presidency nomination. This dangling of the carrot of a tour to
Pakistan has been gross ingratitude for the support the PCB provided
during Bangladesh's bid to become a Test nation, and paints the board in
a terrible light. The travesty of the whole situation is that it could
so easily have been avoided.
The tour to Pakistan should not have
been on the table in the first place. A board chief not ruled by other
interests would have gently and politely declined the offer to tour, and
the matter would have been put to rest there. But it has become
increasingly evident that the tour of Pakistan is nothing more than a
solo political stunt by the BCB boss. Players have privately expressed
their reservations, as have BCB directors. The upshot has been that
Bangladesh stand to suffer far greater damage than the country they will
not tour.
What can only be termed Kamal's "Mission Pakistan" has
landed Bangladesh in choppy waters in the cricket world, and threatens
to moor them in a no man's land of cricket relations. On the one hand,
their decision to tour Pakistan will in no way be taken sportingly by
powerhouses such as India, England and Australia who have steadfastly
refused to tour the country because of security reasons. On the other, a
cancellation of the tour will, as already declared by PCB chief Zaka
Ashraf, endanger cricketing relationship between the two countries,
which had become particularly strong of late.
This state of
affairs has already damaged Bangladesh's reputation in the cricketing
world. Our players may be respected, particularly in the aftermath of
their Asia Cup heroics, but a lot of the important decisions in cricket
are taken behind closed doors in boardrooms. That is where Kamal's
machinations have done the most damage. The wrath of the cricketing
world is now focused on the BCB and particularly its president.
Yesterday the Federation of International Cricketers' Association said
that the decision to tour Pakistan was made to 'enhance someone's
political and other aspirations' amid 'massive conflict of interests'.
The
BCB must be rescued from such a jaundiced perception, and nothing less
than a change at the top, from where all the negativity seems to have
originated, will do. A fresh start is needed under someone the
cricketing world can trust. It is now evident, through the various,
well-documented changes of stance in the lead-up to the Pakistan tour,
that Kamal is unable to occupy a position of trust. Most importantly,
the dominant perception of Kamal now is as a power-broker who will not
sweat over player safety to satisfy his ambition.
As it is a
government-appointed post, it is time for the highest authorities to
intervene. If Kamal can manoeuvre his way out of this and allowed to
continue, then perceptions of the country's cricket, given such a boost
by the Tigers' Asia Cup performance, will hit rock bottom.
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