Bangladesh has remained firm on its stance of not playing its Men’s T20 World Cup matches in India following a meeting between the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), the country’s cricketers, and sports adviser Asif Nazrul on Thursday.
A day earlier, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced that it would not be making any changes to the world cup schedule or groups, days after Bangladesh requested that its matches be moved to Sri Lanka after refusing to play in India.
“There is no scope to change our decision. We believe we did not get justice from the ICC. We still hope that ICC will [do] justice with us,” Nazrul said after today’s meeting, The Daily Star reported.
“The security situation in India remains unchanged. Our security concerns did not materialise out of thin air. 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.
According to Cricinfo, BCB president Aminul Islam said: “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.
“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,“ Islam said, according to Cricinfo.
Following yesterday’s decision by the ICC, Islam had said Bangladesh players were keen to play in the world cup and that he was “hoping for a miracle from the ICC.
“Who doesn’t want to play in the World Cup?” Islam said yesterday.
“Bangladesh players want to play the World Cup. The Bangladesh government wants Bangladesh to play the World Cup. But we don’t think India is safe for our players,” Islam had said.
Bangladesh announced on Jan 4 that it would not play its T20 World Cup matches in India after its player Mustafizur Rahman was released by his Indian Premier League (IPL) team amid growing tensions between the two countries. Subsequently, Bangladesh had “formally requested” the ICC to shift their games to Sri Lanka.
The T20 World Cup begins on February 7 with Bangladesh in England’s Group C. The team is scheduled to play all of their group matches in Kolkata and Mumbai.
