Bangladesh Cricket Board has decided to request the International Cricket Council to review their decision to not allow Zimbabwe to take part in Test cricket. A top official of BCB also hinted that another Test-playing nation is going to back their appeal.
In an emergency meeting of the ICC on June 10 Zimbabwe had agreed to an ICC directive to not play Test matches till December 2004. The situation would be re-assessed then.
Zimbabwe is scheduled to tour Bangladesh in January 2005 for a two-Test series. BCB president Ali Asghar will attend the annual conference of the ICC, scheduled for end of June in London, where BCB intends to present a formal request.
“We are for the Zimbabweans but I am unable to tell you exactly what we intend to do in the meeting,” said the BCB president to New Age on Monday.
Meanwhile, another African nation have sent a letter through the foreign ministry to the Bangladesh Cricket board to gather support for their bid to salvage Zimbabwe, revealed a top official of the BCB. The official revealed that Bangladesh planned to take a strong stance on the issue, if necessary, take on a verbal tussle to convince ICC to reconsider the situation.
“Zimbabwe gave a strong support to our Test status bid. Therefore we have to stand by their side at their dark hour and will do all things possible to get them out of the rut,” said one of the advisors to the BCB president.
“The other reason is, Zimbabwe is being penalised for their standard of cricket and since we are ranked behind them it would not take much to have fingers pointed at us,” added the official.
Zimbabwe played their last Test against Sri Lanka in May 2004. However, Zimbabwe cricket has been in crisis since April when 13 white players of the Zimbabwe team went into a revolt against the Zimbabwe Cricket Union officials and refused to play for Zimbabwe any longer.
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