Hassan puzzled by PCB cancellation

Upon his return from the International Cricket Council meeting in Dubai, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan ridiculed the logic behind Pakistan Cricket Board's cancellation of the scheduled tour to Bangladesh in July-August this year. Speaking to reporters yesterday, the BCB president also conveyed the good news of the confirmation of Australia's tour of Bangladesh as scheduled, saying that the world champions will arrive in August.

"The Australia series has been finalised. I can say this because I had a chat with the president of Cricket Australia after the ICC meeting. He told me that he will be coming to watch the first Test with his wife. That was the first time I talked to him about the Bangladesh series there," said Hassan.

"They will be coming here in August. The first Test will be before Eid, but the second Test will begin on the third day of Eid. Initially we had kept a gap of five days for Eid holidays, but they didn't want to stay here for that long so we decided to cut that short," added the BCB president. The upcoming tour was originally scheduled for 2015, but the CA had postponed it due to security fears.

As per Bangladesh's home schedule, they are supposed to host Pakistan in July ahead of the Australia series. However, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board earlier this week said that they would not be touring Bangladesh. According to the PCB, one of the reasons behind cancelling the tour was that they did not want to tour Bangladesh for a third consecutive time without the BCB reciprocating.

"The decision taken by Pakistan cricket surprised us. Honestly speaking they didn't tell us about the cancellation officially. After the ICC board meeting, their chairman told me that it was going to be difficult for them to tour Bangladesh and that we needed to meet. But soon after that it was reported in the media that they would not be coming," said Hassan.

"I have heard from elsewhere that they have had reservations about coming here for the third time. But that does not seem a valid reason to me. They have toured other countries for more than three times. So now will they stop playing cricket?

"It may be a case with the rankings. It may not be. It's hard to tell because they haven't officially communicated the problem to us. We will send them the official schedule and then get a response from them. After that we can talk about this in a more detailed manner. We want to play cricket," he added.

According to the Future Tours Programme (FTP) a tour of Pakistan was lined up for Bangladesh in 2012 when Mustafa Kamal was at the helm of the BCB. However, that tour was cancelled due to security concerns. Later on, the BCB had to compensate the PCB for cancelling the tour, as the tour was in an advanced stage of planning.

Hassan also said that officials from the ICC will come to Bangladesh to train the umpires here in a month's time in order to improve the quality of umpiring in domestic cricket.

Furthermore, Hassan spoke on the developments of the ICC meeting, in which India lost a crucial vote.

"India's concern was mainly with the financials [revenue sharing model]. We have supported India throughout, but when there's a proposal which will give Bangladesh more money than before, then I can't say no to that. Bangladesh is going to get USD 132 million, which is almost double what we used to get.

"Let me clarify that the BCCI did not have any problem with Bangladesh getting more money, but they had a problem with them getting less money. So now, they are trying to come up with a new formula. There's still time till June. If the ICC feels that their [BCCI's] claims are fine then they will logically increase their share," explained Hassan.

"I think as far as the BCCI is concerned, one of the problems was that they had different people representing them in the last few meetings because they are going through an interim phase right now.

“So there wasn't continuity. Because I don't think the decrease in money should be a problem for them. They are earning a lot. I think the officials who are coming to the meeting are just cautious about accepting such a proposal because the blame might later fall on them. But I am sure the ICC can handle the situation properly," he added.