With the election of the Bangladesh Cricket Board scheduled for November, the councillors of the board started to pull up their socks by raising their voice against the president AHM Mustafa Kamal at a meeting at the Nationals Sports Council recently.
Kamal recently wrote a letter to the NSC for retaining the councillorships of 15 cricketers, whose names were proposed in the amended constitution but it received a huge opposition as 30 councillors from different clubs met the National Sports Council secretary, Shafiq Anwar, on Sunday and requested him to reject the recommendation.
The BCB brought some changes in its constitution at an extraordinary general meeting on March 1 this year including the abolishment of the clauses that gave the former cricketers councillorship in the board.
The board approved the deletion of clauses 9.3.8 and 9.3.9 from the BCB constitution after an intense debate among the councillors and later sent the amended constitution to the NSC for its approval.
However, in the face of strong criticism the NSC put the matter on hold for long and is yet to approve it.
If the NSC approves the amended constitution it will effectively show the cricketers the door.
‘I think it was his personal observation but that cannot be considered as a recommendation by the NSC and that’s what we tried to make clear at the informal meeting with the NSC secretary,’ said a club official on condition of not to be named.
‘The amended constitution needs to be approved immediately by the NSC as the election is not very far away and now if his recommendation is taken into consideration it will only delay the process,’ he added.
It was learnt that at the meeting they had recommended that the NSC should give five former cricketers councillorship under a special quota earmarked for the sports regulatory body. In the last EGM the provision of five representatives of the NSC being a councillor was not changed.
The EGM also approved to have an election for the post of the board president in line with the recommendation of the International Cricket Council, contrary to the current system which sees the BCB president being nominated by the government.
When contacted NSC secretary Shafiq Anwar admitted that he did meet the BCB councillors and they had come up with different suggestions and observations.
‘We talked on different issues with them and they informed us about several issues that needed to be sorted out,’ Shafiq told New Age on Monday.
The officials are expected to meet with the state minister for youth and sports, Ahad Ali Sarkar, soon to discuss the matter with him.
Courtesy of New Age
