Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan Papon yesterday cleared the air about his ad-hoc committee's position regarding the recent amendments to the board's constitution.

While speaking at an 'Exchange of View” programme at the Ruposhi Bangla Hotel the BCB boss said that his ad-hoc committee didn't make any recommendation for the amendments. The National Sports Council (NSC), the regulatory sports body in the country, made those changes themselves.

Everybody was eagerly waiting to know the opinion of the incumbent president regarding the issue, after former BCB president Saber Hossain Chowdhury recently said at a press meet that the recent amendments were carried out in an undemocratic

way and that a couple of clauses drafted in it were immoral.

Papon not only came down hard on Saber but also highly appreciated the latest amended constitution by saying that it has created a level playing field for the next BCB election. Papon, the ruling party lawmaker and son of President Zillur Rahman, also raised his fingers towards a vested quarter who according to him tried to stage a prearranged election.

“Unfortunately I was not in the country when he (Saber Hossain Chowdhury) spoke to the media. I read his comments in the newspapers and I'm highly confused regarding his observations. My opinion is that ninety-five percent of his observations were not true and I really didn't expect such things from a man like him. Either you (the reporters) failed to understand his comments or you wrote the wrong thing, or someone might have mis-

guided him,” the BCB president said about the comments made by Saber.

“The ad-hoc committee didn't recommend anything regarding the changes in the constitution and we can't do so. And the ad-hoc committee has no right to make fundamental changes. NSC has done all the things,” said Papon when asked whether his committee made any recommendation for the latest amendment.

The NSC first made some very interesting observations on the board's amended constitution in October last year, which was approved in the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), and asked the board to adopt those observations in the constitution before sending it back to them for approval. Finally, the NSC approved a new one which featured some major changes soon after the formation of the BCB ad-hoc committee.

Out of the four major changes, Papon expressed satisfaction over three of the amended clauses.

“The president will be elected through the votes of the directors instead of the councillors and it (amended constitution) maintains the standard of the other ICC member countries. We don't see anything undemocratic in it. We are also happy to see that the players got back their councillorship rights because personally I am in favour of that and you know our Prime Minister (Sheikh Hasina) is also in favour of the players,” added Papon.

“We also appreciated the clause that allows the players to become a councillor from any district. I'm happy that the door is now open for all. Still, the district organisers will call all the shots but it's nice to see that the players will also be eligible for councillorship from any district.”

Regarding the awarding of two councillorships to each of the six Premier

Division Cricket Super League clubs, Papon chose to be philosophical.

“All three changes are acceptable to us and we found them highly satisfactory but we didn't give any opinion on the change which allowed two councillors from each Super League club and we don't want to speak in favour of it, but I heard that the club officials met with the minister (state minister for youth and sports Ahad Ali Sarkar) and said that they wanted to bring balance,” he continued.

When asked about his chances of contesting in the next BCB election, Papon said: “A lot of options are open for me. I can contest for directorship, get the nomination from the government, I can come through NSC quota or I can only contest for president in the election, but I am not thinking about it now — my main focus is on how I can bring professionalism to the board, how I can manage things more professionally and handle some of the current issues.”