Clothing maker Texweave has promised to send a new set of jerseys to the Bangladesh cricket team in Australia, in a day or two, after the Bangladesh Cricket Board returned their initial supply. The Tigers were left with no choice but to take two sets of defective jerseys when they took seat on the Australia-bound flight on Friday. Texweave was supposed to supply the team five sets of jersey, which they did on January 22, but many of them were revealed to be faulty no sooner the players opened them before their flight.
Many jerseys had their collar misplaced while in most cases they were also found to be undersize or oversize.
The team management immediately rejected the jerseys and asked Texweave to supply them with fresh jerseys by January 28.
The incident created uproar in BCB, triggering a blame game with officials holding responsible one another for linking the company with the orgnaisation.
Texweave officials said they also supplied jerseys to the Bangladesh cricket team during the ICC World Twenty20 but did not receive any complaint.
‘We supplied the national team their jerseys for the World Twenty20, but at that time it was fine,’ said Ashikur Rahman, the managing director of the company.
‘This time only a handful of jerseys had problems with the collars. We promised the BCB to replace them,’ he said.
Ashikur claimed they maintained all procedures before getting the work order from the BCB.
Shejan Lincon, the executive designer of the company, admitted that they did not participate in any tender and supplied the jerseys as per the requirement of the BCB.
‘The BCB gave us a requisition and accordingly we submitted them four designs. Finally, they selected one design for the World Cup,’ he said.
Lincon said they were given the work order for supplying 1,056 pieces of jerseys and only 70 of them had problems.
‘It all happened because we had to work in a hurry. Officially, we were given the work order on January 9 and we had to supply them on January 21. The supply was delayed by just one day,’ he said.
When asked about the undersized and oversized jerseys, Lincon said the problem arose because of packaging.
‘We gave jerseys in separate boxes to each player. As we had to work in a hurry, some of them were misplaced. We have already sorted out the problems,’ he said.
Former national captain Akram Khan, who is said to have introduced the company to the BCB before the World Twenty20, said he was not involved with the work order this time.
‘I don’t know how they received the work order. It was a decision of tender and purchase committee and I was not involved with that,’ he said.
No official of the tender and purchase committee was available for comment.
-With New Age input
