Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on Thursday reaffirmed its refusal to send the national team to India for next month’s T20 World Cup.
BCB President Aminul Islam Bulbul confirmed the decision to reporters following a high-stakes meeting in Dhaka between the World Cup-bound squad and interim government’s Sports Adviser, Asif Nazrul.
Despite a recent ultimatum from International Cricket Council (ICC), both the government and cricket board have maintained that the security environment in India remains untenable for their contingent.
“We want to play the World Cup, but we will not play in India,” President Bulbul stated, emphasizing that the board is prepared to continue its “fight” for a venue change.
ICC previously rejected Bangladesh’s proposal to relocate its matches to co-host Sri Lanka.
“There is no scope to change our decision. We believe we did not get justice from the ICC. We still hope that ICC will justice with us. The security situation in India remains unchanged. Our security concerns did not materialize out of thin air,” Nazrul told media on Thursday after the meeting with BCB officials and players.
“It stemmed from a real incident. The country (India) could not provide security for one of our cricketers. In that country, the cricket board is an extended part of the government, which either failed or was reluctant to give one of my cricketers protection when put under pressure by extremists groups,” he added.
Blaming the ICC, Nazrul stated that ICC didn’t look into the actual matter.
“We all want to play in the World Cup. We have noticed that the security threat in India has not gone. The ICC has not looked into th actual matter. The ICC has reiterated their standard security procedure. We are still hopeful that ICC will find a way,” he added.
“We will go back to the ICC with our plan to play in Sri Lanka. They did give us a 24 hour ultimatum but a global body can’t really do that,” Islam said.
“ICC will miss out on 200 million people watching the World Cup. It will be their loss. ICC is calling Sri Lanka co-hosts. They are not co-hosts. It is a hybrid model. Some of the things I heard in the ICC meeting was shocking. We will keep fighting,” he also added.
