IND vs BAN | People conspiring to sabotage Bangladesh's tour of India, claims Nazmul Hasan
BCB president Nazmul Hasan, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Bangladesh cricket, believes that there are people trying to sabotage the tour of India. Earlier, the Bangladesh players had threatened to extend their strike and boycott the India tour in case of their demands not being met.
The last few weeks have been an action-packed one for Bangladesh cricket, albeit for all the wrong reasons. First, several local coaches were fired for not fielding leg-spinners in the line-up in the National Cricket League (NCL). Then, the players went on a strike and threatened to boycott the India tour if their demands were not met and finally, president Nazmul Hasan assured them of the same to restore sanity.
However, now, with everything behind, Nazmul has stated that there are people conspiring behind the scenes to try and sabotage the India tour and feels that the signs are obvious. He pointed out the example of Tamim Iqbal, who at first, had informed him that he will only miss the second Test but then, out of the blue, informed that he will miss the whole tour, without giving a definitive reason.
"You people (media) haven't yet seen anything about the India tour. Just wait and watch. If I am saying that I had specific information that this was a conspiracy to sabotage India tour, then you should believe me," Hasan told country's premier Bengali daily 'Prothom Aalo' in an interview, reported TOI.
"Tamim had initially told me that he will only skip the second Test (in Kolkata from November 22-26) for the birth of his second child. However, after the meeting with players, Tamim comes to my room and said, he wants to opt out of whole tour. I asked him 'why so?' but he simply said he won't go," Hasan added.
He then went on to explain that should someone like a Shakib Al Hasan now pull out at the very last moment, the management would be left with no option but to change the whole combination and blamed the players for their actions.
He also expressed his anger and disappointment over the players arranging a strike without his knowledge and said that he now regrets agreeing to their demands and believes that he should have just gone aggressive on them instead.
"Now after this, I won't be surprised if I find that someone else pulls out at the eleventh hour when we would be left with no other options. I have called Shakib to have a chat. Now if he also pulls out, where do I even find a captain? I might have to change whole combination. What do I even do with these players," he said.
"I still can't believe it. I speak to them every day. They didn't even intimate me before calling a strike. I feel that it was a mistake on my part to have agreed to their demands. I should have never done that.
"I should have told the players, 'Unless you call off strike, we will not sit with you guys across the negotiation table. Speaking to various member boards, I felt that this should have been our approach but the media also created pressure on us," Nazmul concluded.