Tigers’ Zim Debacle
Inquest 2003 is perfect model
The direction that cricket in Bangladesh will take hinges on the board meeting immediately after the Eid vacation. After the ill-fated Zimbabwe tour, will the Bangladesh Cricket Board thoroughly examine the failure and thus take some measures to lift Bangladesh’s cricketing fortunes? Or will the same old cosmetic changes be taken to satisfy the call for change in the short-term?
There has been talks hither and thither following the Zimbabwe debacle but what everybody wants, even inside the board, is that the game’s governing body should assess the Tigers’ failure in the just-concluded tour properly to take the game forward.
After Bangladesh’s World Cup debacle in South Africa in 2003, the then BCB president Ali Asghar formed a two-member inquiry committee comprising of Commodore (retd) Mujibur Rahman and Syed Shamim Ahsan to unearth the reasons behind the disastrous World Cup campaign.
In the 31-page document the committee was bold in its assertions and rational in its recommendations and gave a clear perspective of what went wrong in South Africa and who were to blame. As usually the document wasn’t brought to light by the BCB, but the country’s cricket has benefited with implementation of some of the recommendations.
Many believe that there is need for such a measure by the board to find out about what went wrong in Zimbabwe, where the Tigers lost both the one-off Test and five-match one-day series against Brendan Taylor’s men.
The current BCB president AHM Mustafa Kamal has already taken the blame on their shoulder without examining the details about what happened in the ill-fated tour which however irked even some of his colleagues in the board while some has blamed the players for the debacle.
The head of delegation in the tour Shafiqur Rahman Munna, selector Habibul Bashar, coach Stuart Law and manager Tanjeeb Ahsan Saad are expected to submit reports on the tour before the board meeting.
Some had already disclosed their findings in the media where they raised their fingers towards the lack of commitment of some players in the team. Lot of issues has been come into discussion like lack of preparation, grouping in the team, lack of commitment of the players, poor cricket structure in the country behind the poor showing in Zimbabwe.
But everybody will be looking forward to see how the board members look at these serious issues and what kind of assessment they are going to take for greater interest.
Many believe if the board takes any measure just for eyewash that will only harm the game in the country.
“We should address the issue properly otherwise cricket will not go forward. There is no scope to take this failure lightly for the greater interest of the game in the country. If the blame is on the board they will have to bear it and if it is on the players we must take proper action,” said Jalal Yunus, BCB’s director and chairman of the media committee.
But the main thing is that BCB should take proper measure if they want to take proper action.
-With The Daily Star input
