Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Aminul Islam will attend the upcoming T20 World Cup Group A match between India and Pakistan on February 15 in Colombo.
Days before the marquee fixture, Islam hinted that he would try to break the ice with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on the sidelines of the game. The last few months have seen relations between India and Bangladesh strained, and even cricket has been caught in the crossfire. It all started with the BCCI directing Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to release Mustafizur Rahman from their squad and concluded with Bangladesh being ousted from the T20 World Cup after refusing to travel to India.
The replacement of Bangladesh by Scotland also led Pakistan to boycott the game against India, a call that has now been reversed. The Government of Pakistan made a U-turn after the ICC announced that Bangladesh would not be sanctioned and would even get the hosting rights for an event before 2031.
Islam was also a part of the meeting between the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Mohsin Naqvi and the two-member ICC delegation. The meeting took place on Sunday, February 8, at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, and the following day, the ICC announced that Bangladesh would face no sanctions. Once this announcement was made, the Government of Pakistan made it public that the team would be allowed to play against India, and this confirmation came minutes after the BCB president requested the PCB to take the field against Suryakumar Yadav’s India.
Islam has now revealed that he will be attending the upcoming T20 World Cup match in Colombo, hinting towards possibly breaking the ice with the BCCI.
“The ICC has made a decision. The major stakeholders of the ICC are these five Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan) and for the India-Pakistan match on the 15th in the World Cup, they want representatives of all five Asian countries to be present at the ground together, watch the match together and talk to one another,” Aminul was quoted as saying by Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo.
“You can consider it as something like that (an ice breaker between us),” he added.
Will India tour Bangladesh?
Earlier this year, the BCB announced its home season, saying India will tour the country for three ODIs and as many T20Is. However, given the current relations between India and Bangladesh, it’s unlikely that the BCCI would receive government permission to make the trip to Dhaka.
The BCB President, Aminul, also added that they were likely to prepare an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) so that the decisions taken during the Lahore meeting cannot be tampered with in the future.
“We will also enter into an agreement. The agreement will be line-by-line, an MoU-type document, so there is no uncertainty. You know that earlier, when we held the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Annual General Meeting in Dhaka, a similar issue arose. There as well, we prepared a MoU-type document so that no one could ever deviate from the contract in any way,” he said.
“Similar discussions (regarding preparing the MoU) with the ICC are more or less finalised,” he added.