A lesson in scapegoating

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) came down heavily on two players and their clubs for 'tarnishing the image of Bangladesh cricket'.

Tasnim Hasan and Sujon Mahmud have been banned for 10 years each while their clubs, Lalmatia Club and Fear Fighters Sporting Club, have been scratched from playing in any division of the Dhaka league for their role in the Dhaka Second Division League matches.

Sujon had conceded 92 runs off four balls while playing for Lalmatia against Axiom Cricketers. It seems an atrocious performance but exposed the underlying ills in domestic cricket. But it was also a statistical anomaly that had attracted the attention of the cricketing world and forced the BCB to form a special committee to look into the matter. The special committee found that Fear Fighters' Tasnim had also voluntarily conceded 69 runs in 1.1 overs against Indira Road Krira Chakra the day before the Lalmatia-Axiom game in protest of alleged biased umpiring.

What Sujon did out of frustration at 'biased umpiring' has apparently been proven by BCB's special committee as a 'crime' against the image of the country's cricket. The captains, managers and coaches of both teams have also been handed five-year suspensions. However, umpires Shamsur Rahman and Azizul Bari, who were officiating in both matches, have been banned for six months for their inability to handle the matches properly; that ruling must have brought a sigh of relief to the match officials as they will not miss any cricket next season.

You may have a lot of questions in your mind regarding the justification of the punishments but BCB have apparently solved the recurring bane of alleged biased umpiring through this one harsh judgement on the players and the clubs.

But even if you accept the vague terms of 'tarnishing image' and that BCB just follows their own rules, one question must be asked -- whether the game's governing body in the country was sincere enough to go to the root of the problem or were they only looking for some scapegoats.

BCB's umpires committee have the sole authority to allocate match officials but the clubs have long been raising their voices at the committee's deaf ears about taking action against certain umpires and asking that they not be awarded any matches. The committee was even reluctant to entertain requests about the issue from the Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis (CCDM).

Kazi Yusha Mishu and Sailab Hossain Tutul have been occupying the posts of chairman and member-secretary of the BCB's umpires committee respectively for such a long time that many could not recall when they started, and it seems that their aptitude for the posts is directly proportional to their loyalty towards the powerful.

Even as biased umpiring has gradually and silently been decaying Bangladesh cricket and there was a need to revamp the committee to solve this perennial problem, BCB has so far showed little urgency to solve it. 

We wish that this punishment could solve the evil practice of deciding the fate of a match beyond the boundaries of the playing field where every stakeholders, starting from club officials to umpires, engage in backroom dealings. It is a practice that has been going on  for years, especially at the lower levels of domestic cricket and with the full knowledge of the board. But unfortunately, the nature of the punishment hints that the board's wrath was focused on those who, even if wrongfully, tried to portray the true picture of the ills of domestic cricket while failing to address the root of all evils.