Tigers join Shahbagh protest

The members of the Bangladesh national cricket team took their time off on Sunday to join the popular youth protest at the Shahbagh Square demanding death sentence for the war criminals of 1971.
Senior cricketers Mushfiqur Rahim, Mashrafee bin Murtaza, Mohammad Ashraful and Abdur Razzak accompanied by top officials of the Bangladesh Cricket Board arrived at the protest site in the afternoon to the thunderous welcome by the protesters.
Nasir Hossain, Elias Sunny, Sohag Gazi were among other cricketers to have joined the spontaneous protest that was on its sixth day since the announcement of life term imprisonment for Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Kader Mollah on war crime charges.
Sakib al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal and Mahmudullah were conspicuously absent among the top players. The BCB officials said it was their individual decision and they did not force anyone to attend.
The players left the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on a team bus after a view-exchange programme with BCB president Nazmul Hossain, where the trio were present.
The cricketers, who also had national selectors Akram Khan and Habibul Bashar to accompany them, were taken onto the podium, where they raised their hands to express their solidarity.
No cricketers, however, made any speech and returned to their bus quickly. There was a fear of injury among some cricketers as some overenthusiastic protesters scrambled to have a glimpse of them.
Despite a repeated call from the podium to protect the players, whom the youth leaders hailed as national assets, some protesters jumped on the players to take a photograph with their mobile phones.
To protect himself from the overenthusiastic people national captain Mushfiqur Rahim on his way back to the team bus at one stage took shelter inside the Ruposhi Bangla Hotel.
Cricketers also carried some water bottles, biscuits and juice packs with them for the protesters.
BCB president Nazmul said it was a spontaneous
decision, which the players and organisers felt was an obligation.
‘The protests that our young generation launched overwhelmed us. We came here today to tell them that we are with them,’ he said. We came here say no razakar (collaborator of Pakistani Army in 1971) including Kader Mollah has any place in Bangladesh.
‘Today we gave slogans demanding their death penalty. In my life I gave slogans for my party myself, but today it was for my country which gave me a sense of satisfaction,’ he said.
Before the Bangladesh cricket team, members of the Bangladesh Premier League franchise Duronto Rajshahi also arrived at Shahbagh to express their solidarity.