Aminul Islam, the head of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, says he will be in Colombo on Sunday to attend the India-Pakistan T20 World Cup match. He hopes to break the ice with the BCCI following contentious interactions in recent weeks.
Islam stated in an interview with the Bangladeshi newspaper Pratham Alo that the ICC sent out the invitation for the well-known match.
“The ICC has taken a decision. The major stakeholders of the ICC are these five Asian countries and for the India-Pakistan World Cup match on the 15th, they want representatives of all five Asian countries to be present at the ground together, watch the match together and talk to one another,” PTI quoted Islam as saying.
The Asian bloc in the world organization is made up India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Islam responded, “You can consider it as something like that,” when asked if the meeting might present a chance to resolve tensions with the BCCI.
The conflict between the BCCI and BCB began when the Indian Board ordered Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman to be released from his IPL contract with the Kolkata Knight Riders due to “developments all around.” There was a lot of conjecture that the action was brought on by political violence in Bangladesh that targeted Hindus.
In response, citing security concerns, Bangladesh declined to travel to India for their World Cup matches. But the ICC, under the leadership of former BCCI secretary Jay Shah, dismissed their worries, stating that, based on its own evaluation, the threat perception was low to moderate. After much negotiation with the world body, Bangladesh refused to change their position and were eventually replaced in the tournament by Scotland.
As a show of solidarity with Bangladesh, the Pakistani government announced that they would boycott the match against India because of their absence. However, the BCB and the Sri Lankan government convinced Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to rescind the call, ending the standoff. After more deliberation, the ICC agreed not to punish BCB for its prior position and granted Bangladesh one ICC event for the 2028–2031 cycle.
Islam stated that in order to make sure that the guarantees are unchangeable, the board will draft a Memorandum of Understanding.
“We will also enter into an agreement. The agreement will be line by line, an MoU-type document, so that there is no uncertainty. You know that earlier when we held the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Annual General Meeting in Dhaka, a similar issue arose. There as well, we prepared a MoU-type document so that no one could ever deviate from the contract in any way. Similar discussions (regarding preparing the MoU) with the ICC are more or less finalised,” said Islam.
