Former Bangladesh Cricket Board president Ali Asghar broke his silence on Saturday and criticised current BCB president Nazmul Hasan for not making a level playing field for the forthcoming election ‘If an interim board president himself wants to contest the election I don’t think there will be any level playing field,’ Ashgar told reporters at a programme on Saturday. ‘During my time also there was an election without any such question. As a president, appointed by the government, I never took any side like this.’
Ashgar is the second former BCB president after Saber Hossain Chowdhury to take a swipe at Nazmul, who leads a 13-member ad hoc committee that was mainly appointed to conduct the BCB election.
While Saber, a ruling party lawmaker as Nazmul, announced that he will contest the election, Asghar, a leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said he has no such intention.
‘If I decide to take part in the election tomorrow do you think they will let me contest the election, I don’t think so,’ said Ashgar, who headed the BCB from 2001-06.
‘We do not want to participate in the election because we don’t want to be engaged in this partisan affair,’ he added.
Asghar alleged that the BCB was heavily politicised over the last few years and recently on the occasion of election it has reached an optimum level.
‘Look at the Bogra stadium, there is no game there because of political reason. The same can be said about Khulna,’ he said. ‘We want to keep cricket or for that matter any sort of sports out of politics,’ said Asghar, who joined hands with his party colleagues to unveil a new organisation called National Krira Unnayn Parishad.
The former board president also criticised the current BCB ad-hoc committee for trying to take all the credit for getting the hosting rights of World Twenty20, a tournament that was awarded to Bangladesh during his time as BCB president.
‘We were in the cricket board from 2001 to 2006 and we tried to do a lot of things. During that time we had also taken initiative to host the World Cup that you can know from the ICC correspondence,’ said Ashgar.
‘The World Twenty20 came to Bangladesh when I was BCB president. Still there is no name of us and everyone is trying to take the credit. This is totally politicised, which can also understand,’ he said.
Asghar added that he was looking forward to the much-awaited debate between Saber and Nazmul ahead of the election like any other cricket fans in Bangladesh.
‘Both of them are talking to the media. But we want to see what the real outcome is,’ said Ashgar, also a former president of the Asian Cricket Council.
-With New Age input
