The Bangladesh Cricket Board is set to miss another timeline for forming much-talked about regional cricket bodies as no progress has been recorded in this regard in the past two weeks.
After the third meeting of the BCB’s Board of Directors on April 18, BCB president Nazmul Hasan said they had asked the divisional sports organisations to give their final proposal in this regard within 15 days and hoped that the process would be completed within a month.
The deadline for receiving the proposal elapsed on May 4, but a top official on Saturday confirmed the board was yet to get anything from any divisional sports body.
‘We are yet to get any proposal. We may need a few more days,’ said BCB’s chief executive officer Nizamuddin Chowdhury.
Officials of at least three Divisional Sports Associations confirmed that they were yet to take any initiative in this regard.
‘We can’t send a proposal by seeing a statement in television. The BCB did not ask for anything formally. Any of the BCB directors also did not discuss the matter with us verbally,’ said Sirajuddin Mohammad Alamgir, a former director and general secretary of Chittagong Divisional Sports Association.
BCB chief executive officer Nizamuddin said they did not feel it necessary to send a letter as every division has its own representative in the Board of Director.
‘The BCB has representatives from each district and division and they have been given the task. Most of them are involved with district or division. Those, who are not involved, they can discuss with [with local organisers] if they feel it necessary,’ he said.
Anwarul Islam, the general secretary of Rangpur Divisional Sports Association and a BCB director, said they were also yet to start the process of finalising their proposal.
‘I don’t know about other divisions, but we are yet to start the process. The matter was only discussed in meeting, but we did not get any letter from the Board. Once we get a formal letter we will act on that,’ he said.
The idea of regional cricket association was being discussed since 2000 when Bangladesh got the Test status as organisers felt cricket was needed to be decentralised.
But no meaningful progress was made until the concept was incorporated in BCB constitution in 2012. When Nazmul took over the charge of BCB in 2013 as its first elected president in October 2013, he put a special emphasis on strengthening regional cricket bodies in order to find more talent.
The BCB also formed a committee in this regard headed by its former vice-president Mahbubul Anam, but committee restricted its activities to only using rhetoric in different programmes without taking any serious steps.
After his four-year term ended last year, Nazmul said not being able to form the regional cricket associations was his biggest regret.
During the BCB Annual General Meeting on October 2 last year, Nazmul said forming regional cricket associations would be his top priority.
‘We’ve prepared the guidelines of it and next committee will start executing it,’ Nazmul had told reporters after the meeting.
More than six months elapsed and the BCB was still working on it.
Source: New Age.
