Politics in Cricket
I saw the other thread on selection process. Figured that the political motivation behind development of cricket needs to be addressed. This is my most favourite topic.
Just before the current Board election (which was set up at large neways) we had a board which overthrew the previous elected board using all kinda different laws. If you can go back to the newspapers from 2002 you will be able to follow up what was going on in case we need to refresh our memories. All these has been done to ensure the control of Arafat Rahman, the younger son of One of our "Beloved Series" of prime ministers, Khaleda Zia. And the national election is coming up. So if BNP gets defeated in the election then you can be certain that this board will be overthrown as well with few of this board returning due to their great virtue of flip-flopping. If the political animosity plays the very basic of so called "Professional"BCCB, I dont understand how the rest of the process can be called transparent. I am not an agent from the last board, which had their own political vision and serious flaws. However this trend that has been established in the sports arena of the bangladesh is very unfortunate and is the root reason of our weak presence in the international arena.
Fortunately the situation in cricket is much better, but I strongly believe it is due to the fans pressure and the success of cricketers in the international arena since 1996. If we look into the domestic league system this argument of mine becomes more evident. Since now a days there is almost no fans pressure and lack of monetary supply (national team being the focus of everybody) whats so ever the BCCB has completely ignored the domestic league at large. The fact that the players get around 100 Tk or less then 2 dollars as salary per day is more than appalling and disgusting. If the basic principle of professionalism is taking cricket as sole profession, then one ought to ask the question, how a player who is getting that low of money, can accept cricket as a profession. The situation was even funnier with the NCL sponsorship. This year they got it quarter way through the league. Our all effort goes towards international arena cause we can "steal" most money out of it. We stage big events and make all kind of stadium and stuff then after event is passed we ignore those stadiums and they becomes places for cow gazing. Like this year organising the game in Bogura. I am no way against the idea of creating new stadiums and organising games out of Dhaka, I take it as a key point for developing the game further. But to choose a politicaly motivated city (remember bogra is BNP's strongest hold and ziaur rahmans own home district) in a way which is completely appalling, certainly raises questions. To be able to organise the game in bogra without much of a protest they had to make sure that the construction of stadiums in dhaka and chittagong doesnot get finished and the the khulna stadium doesnot get approved due to lack of infrastructural help. Exactly that is what have occurred. Khulna was selected only to give the process more fairer look. This is certainly not being professional.
Edited on, February 19, 2006, 3:45 PM GMT, by mafizraju.
|