‘Decentralisation top priority’

The formation of regional cricket association or decentralisation of cricket has been a long-standing demand but it remained unfulfilled for a decade. However, like his predecessors, Nazmul Hassan, who was re-elected Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president yesterday, said that he would decentralize cricket within the shortest possible time.

“Our first job will be to form the regional cricket association and we will try to finalise that in the next six months. We will move forward with a special plan. If we select the region and play it might not work that much. So first and the most important thing will be to engage the grassroots level organisers before forming the regional cricket association. We may even outline everything by the next three months and will look to pass that in the EGM,” Hassan said while complying with reporters after emerging from the board meeting where the 26 directors save him wanted him to occupy the hot seat of the country’s richest sports federation.

There was little doubt that Hassan would continue, especially after his successful four years at the helm, although he publicly wanted to quit after claiming it too demanding a job for a ruling party lawmaker and a CEO of a multinational company.

“As you know after serving as the president for the last four years I personally wanted only to work as a director. I wanted someone else to become president as it was getting very challenging for me personally with the amount of time I had to give here. However the previous directors along with the two new directors wanted to me become president again and reasoned that there would be hard times ahead for Bangladesh cricket. And it’s important for me to stay,” said Hassan to the media.

Hassan informed that there would be drastic changes to most of the sub-committees apart from the cricket operations and technical committee. He added the election for the two vice-president posts along with the new committee would be formed during the Dhaka phase of the Bangladesh Premier League that starts in Sylhet on November 4.

“For the vice-presidents post there are a few interested candidates this time as well and we will sit and decide whatever is good for us,” Hassan said. Changes will definitely come however there may not be major changes in the cricket operations and technical committee as it’s a very difficult and technical thing. However there will be changes in the other committees where we are looking to have some new faces along with the older members,” he added.

Source: The Daily Star