[thebest]

Fazal,
you are living too much in the land of Dubya. Either with us or against us - nothing in between. But life is not black and white. There are grey areas in most cases. There are three parties in each and every sport - the administrators, the players and match officials and fans. For success of the sport each of these actors have to perform its acts perfectly. You want Board should operate professionally. If you want professionals you need to pay them top money. To give them top money you need your fan are willing to pay you top money. Fan would only pay top money if players perform regulerly. To perform regulerly players need world class facilities beside the god given talent. Again administrator need the money to develop those facilities. So you see it is vicious circle. So what options the administrators have. The only feasible option without antagonizing the fans directly is to commercialize the sports. They are commercializing the sports. This happened not only in cricket but also in Football , Olympics (actually cricket is much less commercialize than the other popular sport). In ideal situation, I agree with you that game is publicized and popularized but ground reality is far from the ideal situation. AFAIK, with the exception of Scandinivan countries live football in Europe is in pay TV for the last 5 to 10 years. And only this year public owned TV did not show live cricket in the UK (I may be wrong please correct me). In India by court decesion, DD have the right to show all matches involving India palying in India. So all is not lost.
If my above argument make you think that I am implying BCB or for that matter board officials are angel then you are wrong. You correctly point out that most of them are their not to serve cricket but for money and glamour associated with it. They are abusing their position and in the name of patriotism even driving away the hard core cricket fan.
Fazal, you were one of the vetern of this board. I did not expect a cheap shot againest BCCI from you. We should our grievnece againest BCCI but on this issue (that is ICL) I would keep out BCCI. There are two reasons - number one you mentioned a board should make their decision purely based on principle, for the betterment of the game, promotion the game. For this we need our share from ICC. You and I like it or not, ICC is run by BCCI; unless you have big balance like ACB and ECB and team like Australia and England I would not antagonize BCCI. Look at NZ and Pakistan. NZ in fact sacrificed their best player and their board is more accountble to the stakeholders than us , I believe. Number two - our board is the richest sports administration of teh country not because cricket is popular than football but we are one of the top dog of the world. We are top dog, because we are a test playing country. All most all the money came to cricket after our elevation to test status. And do you honestly belive we were more deserving test status than Kenya? For political reason, BCCI backed us and suddenly lots of money in cricket and we have this discussion on ICL and exodous to ICL. Yes BCB fail to perform its duty; We still did not know what action BCB took after Ash and JS inform about ICL's approach to national cricketer; who assured Aftab that there would be only six months ban? Why senior players (Rafiq, HB, even Pilot) are so venomous againest the board? Why there are mismanagement before every series in Bangladesh? But are these make them traitor; They are incompetant; yes. They are greedy; yes but traitor I do not think so.
Now come to the players exodous. They are badly treated by the board, yes if you belive them. Lets give them benefit of doubt and belive their version and why some of us think that they are traitor. Lets see who is traitor. Dictionary defined traitor a person who is guilty of treason in betraying friends, country or cause. What they did bring bad PR for cricket of Bangladesh. There was talk of NZ pulling out of this tour. Even after the great victory yesterday NZ media was portaying that that got beaten by Bangladesh B. There exodous could even stop the flow of money if some of the crowd pullers refuse to visit the country due to weaking our team. Come on you and I know those fourteen are fringe player bar one or two; but most of the foreigner and foreign media do not know it. What piss me off that they constanly blame BCB not taking care of them; not ensuring them they are part of the national team. With the exception of Rafiq and HB all the others are product of BCB. BCB spends lots of money on them. BCB did take care of their development; ICL knows them because BCB invest on them. It is their responsibilty to confirm themselves as part of national team. Mash, Sakib, Raj does not need those assurance because they ensured themselves. I did not like their backstabbing. Why they want Ash's name go down with them. If their claim is true just submit those proof to BCB or other authority you have confidence. You don't malign your leader in front of foreign media. When Sk Hasina did those, almost all of us joined in the band wagon to malign him; but when the same thing SN and AK did we opened a thread Ash is culprit. Why this double standard by the fan.
BTW I did not like the BCB stunt on putting my beloved flag as jersy. That was simply a cheap shot. Neither did I like that players denial that they joined ICL for money
At the end, I would conclude both party is guilty. But board officials crimes are at Bush/ Chenny scale in terms of greed and abuse of power the ICL players crime is Quisling scale in terms of greed and betray.