Bangladesh government names Asif Nazrul as sole decision-maker of pulling out of T20 World Cup

A Bangladesh government investigation has found Asif Nazrul, the sports adviser during Bangladesh’s interim government, as the sole decision-maker for pulling out of the men’s T20 World Cup in India earlier this year. The three-member committee released its findings on Tuesday, where it concluded that the BCB at the time lacked “independent strategic leadership, crisis diplomacy capability and long-term planning,” when dealing with the high-profile issue.

On January 24, after three weeks of back and forth between the ICC and the BCB, the former replaced Bangladesh with Scotland for the T20 World Cup. That decision was taken after a majority of the ICC board voted against Bangladesh’s participation after the BCB refused to play their matches in India. It all started after the BCCI removed Mustafizur Rahman from the IPL, after he had been bought by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the auction.

But rather than discussing the Mustafizur matter at a board level, the BCB’s hands were tied at the onset when Nazrul, effectively the country’s sports minister at the time, announced in a Facebook post that the team would not participate in the T20 World Cup matches in India. The BCB then requested the ICC to shift their matches to co-hosts Sri Lanka, which the governing body denied.

In May, Bangladesh’s new sports minister Aminul Haque had announced that a three-member committee would investigate why the team didn’t participate in the T20 World Cup. The committee was headed by Dr AKM Oli Ullah, additional secretary of the administration sub-division at the Ministry of Youth and Sports. It also included former Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar and Barrister Faisal Dastagir.

They interviewed Bangladesh T20I captain Litton Das, Test captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and assistant coach Mohammad Salahuddin, apart from BCB president Tamim Iqbal, chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury and former general secretary Syed Ashraful Huq.

Almost every interview provided in the report cited Nazrul as the sole decision-maker when it came to Bangladesh’s participation in the T20 World Cup. Shanto and Litton were in the meeting held with Nazrul, which also had then BCB president Aminul Islam in attendance, a day after the ICC board decided that Bangladesh would be replaced if the BCB didn’t want to play in India. Both Shanto and Litton stated that Nazrul took the decision despite the players’ positivity towards participating in the World Cup matches in India.

However, Nazrul had said just two days before Bangladesh’s elections that it was the BCB and the Bangladesh players who decided not to play in India, and not the government. He, however, said later on Tuesday that he took the decision himself.

“As the then Sports Minister, the decision not to travel to India for the T20 World Cup was primarily mine,” he wrote in a Facebook post just hours after the government report was published on Tuesday. “I have stated this publicly on multiple occasions. Therefore, I fail to understand what prompted the Ministry of Sports to conduct a high-profile investigation into the matter and release the findings after all this time.”

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