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BCB playing fishy game

Questions left as cricket chief flies to Singapore for crucial meet

Sports Reporter
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan Papon will fly for Singapore tonight to attend a crucial board meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC), where a proposal for the revamp of the game's governing body will be put on the table on February 8. The draft proposal has been redrafted following the ICC board meeting on January 28, but it is debatable if the redraft is anything more than eyewash.
The BCB boss is going to attend the crucial meeting that may well decide the future of Bangladesh cricket without having formally sat with his board members and without any open discussion to unearth a course of action to save the Tigers from the possibility of a painful demise.
On his return from the January 28 meeting, Papon had said that the principles placed in the last meeting were unanimously agreed upon. There was an air of celebration around Papon - a ruling party lawmaker - who was given a hero's welcome by his loyalists. The party line was that Papon had stood up to the Big Three (India, England and Australia) and forced them into a readjustment of their original draft proposal, with notable omissions of words like "two-tier", "promotion" and "relegation". Papon also calmed the passionate cricket fans, many of whom had earlier taken to the streets in protest of the country's Test future being endangered by the original draft proposal, by saying that Bangladesh were going to play more Tests as a result of the meeting. But in reality, it is not as simple as having some words omitted and agreeing to reworded principles.
Although omitting the aforementioned words, there was enough in the reworked version to suggest thatthedraft retains much of its characteristics, only in more complex terms. One of the reworked principles says that there will be no immunity, an odd clause if there
is to be no relegation. Also, the new draft says that there will be opportunity for all countries (which includes Associate Members) to play all formats based on a meritocracy, again hinting ata tiered system.
After the reworking the board chiefs have taken the proposal to their home boards before going back to the ICC table on February 8 and 9. The Pakistan Cricket Board on Monday lashed out over the controversial plans to reform cricket's governing body, describing the proposed revamp as unjust and even asked their chairman Zaka Ashraf to seek guidance from Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and "to apprise him on this matter of immense significance and of national interest, which will have wide reaching impact on future of cricket in Pakistan".
Bangladesh have much more to lose than Pakistan, Sri Lanka or South Africa (the only three Full Members still opposed to the proposal), because if two tiers are still on the horizon the longterm future ofTests in the country will be seriously threatened. In that light, it seems doubly strange that the issue has not been discussed formally at the
highest level.
As an explanation some of his loyalists have said that the BCB boss had already gotten the guideline from the last board meeting in January - before the first ICC meeting on the draft proposal took place. That is a simply ridiculous explanation, as things have not remained the same and there is a new proposal to pore over. Just because he agreed in principle the matter is not done and dusted. As Pakistan have shown, it was only the starting point of more deliberation by home boards, which has evidently not happened in the BCB.
Most importantly, the president has not gone beyond the demagogic in his utterances about a matter of such import and contention. Before he leaves for Singapore, it is his duty to leave the people with a clear idea on where the BCB stands - whether he fully understands the meaning of the meritocracy principle, and which way Bangladesh will vote if it means a two-tiered system.
The onus is on him as he has seemingly taken the dangerous stance of unilaterally speaking for and negotiating