Impending BCB changes around the corner

According to Tapan Chowdhury, Bangladesh's Sports Advisor, the national cricket board will be restructured once a new chairman is named. Recent reports indicated that the Bangladesh Cricket Board's (BCB's) next president, whose identity is yet to be confirmed, will be announced upon his arrival in the capital next week.

In regards to these reports, former BCB general secretary Syed Ashraful Haq told The Daily Star,"It is no magic figure, but the number of members would be between nine to 13. I have asked him to keep it to around ten, as it is with the International Cricket Council or Asian Cricket Council but it is up to him."

He did not comment on who the new BCB boss would be.

Haq, also the ACC chief executive, recently came to Dhaka for a meeting with Chowdhury. "We only talked about cricket. I told him about my ideas and how I see the board evolving into a more professional and a lot more accountable body," he said. "There should be people who will not be holding honorary posts rather there should be people who will be paid for their job. That is what we basically talked about."

According to Haq, Chowdhury preferred 12 to 13 members on the new committee. "I did not discuss any names with him but whoever they are, must have cricketing background, both internationally as well as in the domestic front," he said. "I gave him my views on how it should be structured, to be more specific. It should be structured like it is in a big cricket organisation so that we can compete with them in that regard too."

Haq believed the BCB should operate around a business plan, with an executive board, but felt that it also needed to have representatives from not just Dhaka, but exterior cities and towns, such as Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet.

He was also critical of the current board's handling of domestic cricket.

"In the next few years, the BCB will receive an astronomical amount of money from the ICC so it would not be wise for someone with an honorary post to handle that much because that person would not have any accountability," he said. "A general secretary cannot exist when there is a CEO. But here, the CEO should be someone with some cricketing knowledge because he represents Bangladesh in the important ICC meetings. But for that matter, if you keep both, then I don't think it makes any sense."