BCB elections set for October 10

The Bangladesh Cricket Board's elections will be held on October 10, according to a gazetted notice of the National Sports Council (NSC). It will be held at the NSC Tower in Dhaka, with the results announced on the same day.

The polls will coincide with the second day of the first Test between Bangladesh and New Zealand in Chittagong. But BCB's acting CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury has insisted that it will not affect the holding of the match.

Twenty-three directors will be elected through votes from 172 councillors of various entities around the country. These include all the divisional and district sports associations, the Dhaka clubs, former cricketers, governmental institutions and education boards. The NSC, the sports regulatory body in Bangladesh, will select three directors among their 15 councillors. From these 26 directors, the BCB will choose its president, the first elected chief in the board's history. A date has not been declared for the presidential election.

The BCB's current president, Nazmul Hassan, and former chief Saber Hossain Chowdhury are taking in the part in the elections, and are likely to head two panels and battle for the president's post. Both are ruling-party MPs, but have been involved in a verbal battle through the media in recent weeks.

While it is the first time the BCB head will be elected, it's the fifth BCB elections - previously they were held in 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2009. The directors elected in the last election ran the board till October last year, after which the government appointed an ad-hoc committee. The body was supposed to hold elections within three months of their appointment, but have taken almost a year to complete preparations for the elections.