Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
My wholehearted congratulations to Mustafa Kamal on his resignation from the honourable position like ICC president. He really showed a bold front coming up with scathing remarks on Indian and ICC officials. He did not care for the highly prestigious post. He did not agree to sitting on the fence. This is an eye opener expected to create a furor among the representatives of cricket playing countries.
Kamal said he had resigned after being denied the right as ICC president to award the World Cup trophy to the winners, Australia, in the final in Melbourne. Instead the ICC chairman, Narayanaswami Srinivasan, handed over the rophy, prompting Kamal to launch a scathing attack on the Indian and the ICC top management, whom he termed “ugly people”.”I’m again requesting that these type of people should be away from cricket, otherwise cricket will be spoilt, cricket will not move forward,” Kamal said in Dhaka. “My earnest request to ICC is to revisit those things. I’m sure people will find out why I have resigned and they will unearth the truth – who are these people, what are they doing and how they are running ICC. I was supposed to give the trophy, it is my constitutional right. But very unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to do so. My rights were dishonoured. After I go back home, I will let the whole world know what’s happening in ICC. I will let the whole world know about those guys who are doing these mischievous things. The governing body confirmed his resignation, but disputed the tone of the departure – saying in a statement: “In his letter to the ICC Chief Executive David Richardson, Mr Kamal said he was stepping down on personal grounds and offered his apologies to all associated with the ICC, while adding that he had no complaints to make against anyone”.
The ICC had previously criticized Kamal for his outburst during ongoing world cup cricket 2015 against a controversial decision in the World Cup quarter-final match between India and Bangladesh. Kamal had said, ‘Let the game of cricket under the leadership of ICC touch the hearts and minds of every cricket lover.’ The ICC Board will now consider the vacant position of the ICC President at its forthcoming meeting in Dubai on 15 and 16 April.”
I fully appreciate the sentiment expressed by Kamal in an emotional overtone. In fact he rose to the occasion against criminalization of cricket and gross injustice meted out to team Bangladesh. We at least expected a fair field and no favour from the umpire. It seems that World Cup 2015 was anything but fair. The image of ICC has been poorly esteemed.
Naturally, ICC has become subservient to Indian hegemony only considering huge money. In other words, it is in the leading strings of India. I admit India won World Cup in 2011- thanks to its excellent batting line up and bowling suiting Asian conditions. In bouncy wickets existing in Australia and New Zealand the hosts are expected to dominate. India remains unbeaten rising to semi final in 2015 World Cup. Bangladesh performed well throwing down a gauntlet to its mighty opponents among elite club. But the way the umpires treated Bangladesh in the quarter final all with partiality and nepotism going in favor of India was really eye boggling. I have heard that the original venue of India Bangladesh encounter was shifted to Melbourne(MCG) to the advantage of team India. There is reason to believe that criminal syndicate within the ICC carried out its evil practice on the sly. According to news reports:
Hundreds of Bangladesh cricket supporters burnt an effigy of Pakistani cricket umpire Aleem Dar and marched in the capital Dhaka after the country was knocked out of the World Cup.They chanted “Shame, Shame. No to ICC conspiracy,” as they shouted slogans against the umpires and the International Cricket Council after Bangladesh’s best ever World Cup came to an end following a 109-run defeat against India. Opener Rohit Sharma top-scored with 137 off 126 balls and Suresh Raina hit a rapid-fire 65 from 57 balls as India posted a daunting total of 302 in the quarter-final in Melbourne that took the match away from Bangladesh. But Bangladeshi fans were furious after player-of-the-match Sharma got a big break on 90 when he holed out to deep mid-wicket off Rubel Hossain, only for Dar and fellow umpire Ian Gould to signal a no-ball for what appeared to be a legitimate waist-high delivery. Fans also protested two other decisions including a catch against Bangladesh’s best batsman Mohammad Mahmudullah that snuffled out any hope for a comeback by the Tigers. Some Dhaka University students commented like ‘The umpires were biased. We did not mind if we had been beaten legitimately. But this is pure robbery. We protest these bad decisions.’ Another student held a placard that dubbed the ICC as the ‘Indian Cricket Council’, not International Cricket Council.” It was India’s money that forced the ICC to work against us. So it’s fair to call it Indian Cricket Council,” “Bangladesh is a victim of international conspiracy,” another protester shouted, as live footage of the protests were broadcast live. Facebook and Twitter were flooded with comments on the “biased” decisions although most also applauded the Tigers for their best ever World Cup performance.”What we saw today, on three separate occasions, was the Bangladesh team denied a fair hearing.”I’ll just talk about the no-ball, since that was the most blatant, and probably the most influential decision,” “What naked partiality!!! Shame on you!!
Now cricket has been disarrayed by the unethical and corrupt practices. There happens to be so many crickets with a glut of everything for money. TV also attracts the cricket stars and many have appeared in commercial advertisement as models. How funny! Cricket bonanza has become intrinsically linked with money bonanza thus making rooms for all unhealthy probabilities. The looming shadow of the influence of Packer’s show over cricket has been marked by the introduction of ultra-modern cricket with much fanfare – decoration, music and dances. ICL appeared in the scenario holding sway for sometime and those joining there were termed rival cricketers by the Board and ICC. ICL ban hit national crickets with a small pool of talented crickters.Later on IPL were introduced to neutralize the influence of ICL.
BCCB seems to be careful about its stance on Kamal’s reaction. In fact the bold step of Mustafa Kamal set BCCB on the horns of a dilemma. The allegation of Kamal against unfair umpiring was straight forward. He did not want to mince matter. The problem of BCCB is that it cannot openly condemn ICC for depriving Kamal of his constitutional rights. For some obvious reasons BCCB ceased to remark anything that would resent ICC. Nor it could castigate India’s role in an outburst of sentiment despite the fact that Srinivasan’s appearnce in the formal function of presentation ceremony does not look decent. Srinivasan was insensible having no courtesy. In recent development BCCI expelled Srinivasan and Kolkata’s Bengali Daily Ananda Bazar criticized Srinivasan’s gesture as highly uncivil. His conduct was not fair and square riding roughshod over the rights of Mustafa Kamal. A massive spat erupted between Kamal and ICC Chairman Narayanaswami Srinivasan, who violated the ICC practice and presented the World Cup to winners Australia at Melbourne. Normally, ICC presidents hand trophies, but Srinivasan used Kamal’s outburst against poor umpiring in the India-Bangladesh match to sideline him. He got others to support his decision to present the trophy at the presentation ceremony. BCCB has to be circumspect while defining its position so far the resignation of Kamal is concerned. BCCB Chief Nazmul Hassan, ruling party MP, rather said that Kamal’s resignation from ICC will not affect cricket relation with India. Hassan spoke to journalists about Kamal’s resignation and the future of the cricketing ties between the two countries. Hassan said Kamal stepping down from the top post of the game’s governing body was ‘unfortunate’ and that it would have been better had it not happened. Many think the cricket ties could take a hit because of the incident. Hassan, however, ruled that out.”I can’t find any reason (for this to rupture the relations between India and Bangladesh)… We are not complaining against any specific country. “We have spoken about umpiring. We stressed why technology was not used when it was readily available.”
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Professor, Department of Public Administration, Chittagong University)
