Has Faruque let ego take over in Hathurusingha’s sacking?

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Faruque Ahmed has made a meal manoeuvring the removal of national team head coach Chandika Hathursingha.

Faruque announced at a press conference in Mirpur on Tuesday the suspension of Hathurusingha on disciplinary grounds, mentioning two reasons -- the first being misconduct centering around the alleged assault on a player during the 2023 ODI World Cup, while the second is his exceeding of the allotted period of leave.

Faruque's clarification of the suspension was nothing short of bafflement. After stating that Hathurusingha would be given 48 hours to respond to the show-cause notice, a practice he said adhered to international norms, Faruruqe dealt a hammering blow, saying that the Sri Lankan's contract would be terminated following his response. 

To further add to this, he even announced that Phil Simmons will be taking charge of the national team.

Now, the BCB already had an established clause in Hathurusingha's contract that would allow the sacking of the coach with immediate effect. If the board had already held discussions with a replacement for Hathurusingha, meaning they had already made up their minds about the axing, why bother serving a show-cause notice that would not even matter? 

Why create an environment of humiliation for the national team coach who headed a training session earlier on the same day unaware of what was to transpire?

It also comes as a surprise as Faruque asserted later in the day that the sacking had little to do with how the national team got embarrassed with on-field performances in the India tour earlier this month. 

Instead, the board president cherry-picked an issue -- the alleged assault of a player -- that was apparently addressed in a fact-finding report after Bangladesh's 2023 ODI World Cup debacle. All members of that probe committee, including Akram Khan, have retained their board memberships, and the fact that the alleged assault of the player was a key finding (according to reports in the media) and the board chose not to act on such a severe offence immediately only to inflate it now as a major reason to sack Hathurusingha now sparks more questions than it answers. 

The most perplexing part of the entire thing is that Faruque never even spoke to Hathurusingha, the most important party to the 2023 World Cup debacle chapter on which the key reasons for the sacking have been based. 

"I did not speak to him. The BCB CEO [Nizamuddin Chowdhury] has spoken to him on my behalf, and handed over the [show-cause] letter to him," Faruqe had said in yesterday's presser. 

Faruque also mentioned that he had done his own investigation. 

"I investigated it myself. I spoke to the victim [of the assault during the World Cup 2023]. I spoke to the eye-witness. Both are in the [new] report as the incident was mentioned in the previous report," Faruque added. 

Even though the World Cup debacle had transpired during the regime of the previous board president Nazmul Hassan Papon, Faruque went to the trouble of re-investigating on his own accord. As Faruque mentioned, he even spoke to the victim of the alleged assault and eyewitnesses of the event. 

So, does it not beg the question as to why could Faruque not find the time to demand an explanation from the perpetrator, Hathurusingha? After all, as Faruque himself claimed, he is someone who is all for following the international norms in such cases.

So, why did Faruque choose to delegate the part of questioning Hathurusingha to the board CEO? Does it not mean that the board president had let his prejudice regarding Hathurusingha get the better of his judgment?  

The writing was on the wall as Hathurusingha's termination seemed to be only a matter of time after Faruque's appointment as the BCB boss on August 21.

Fauruqe had bluntly opposed having the Sri Lankan at the helm before he took charge, saying he would remove the coach if he were to take charge. He stood firm with that stance and entertained questions about how he does not prefer Hathurusingha as head coach on several occasions in press conferences. 

So, the fact that the Tigers' drubbing in the recent India tour had very little to do with Hathurusingha's sacking and the length to which Faruque was ready to go -- digging up dirt from a period during which he was not even at the helm of the board -- only makes one question whether the entire manouevre was made to serve the specific purpose of showing Hathurusingha the door.

Faruque even did not recuse himself from parroting his disapproval during Bangladesh's first Test against Pakistan in Rawalpindi in August. And, as a result of that, Hathurusingha had to face questions about his future, centering around the BCB president's preference, during a series which Bangladesh eventually won 2-0.

The tense relationship between Hathurusingha and Faruque is no secret. The latter was pushed aside as selector in 2016 when Hathurusingha and the chairman of cricket operations made their way into the selection panel -- a system that was later scrapped.

The entire conundrum that Faruque initiated to set the premise of the sacking has set an unsavoury precedence in which Bangladesh cricket's image can be put into question for candidates who would want to work with the country's cricket in the future.