Vin­ode Mam­chan

Let no one fool you, se­cu­ri­ty is a prob­lem all over the world and in the com­ing months we will all look to­wards Asia, where Bangladesh will be hop­ing to host the World T20 tour­na­ment in March. Right now, it is very hard for of­fi­cials of the Bangladesh Crick­et Board (BCB) to be work­ing in an en­vi­ron­ment where one fool can send their crick­et back some 20 years.Crick­et in Asia has al­ways been played un­der heavy se­cu­ri­ty be­cause of the volatile na­ture of that part of the world. Sri Lankan crick­eters were put un­der the gun in La­hore, Pak­istan, in 2009, and since then there has not been an in­ter­na­tion­al ball bowled in that coun­try.West In­dies al­so for­feit­ed their World Cup match against Sri Lan­ka in Sri Lan­ka in 1996 be­cause of trou­ble cre­at­ed by the rebel Tamil Tigers, and there have been times when crick­et has been can­celled in In­dia be­cause of un­ruly crowd be­hav­iour.

Bangladesh crick­et is about to re­ceive a shot in the arm–no pun in­tend­ed–, with the host­ing of the World T20 tour­na­ment and the Asia Cup in their neck of the woods. When coun­tries host tour­na­ments like this, they ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly in terms of fi­nan­cial gain and al­so from the vis­i­bil­i­ty giv­en to the rest of the world.Al­so, young peo­ple in that part of the world and across the world will get the chance to see their he­roes and will be more mo­ti­vat­ed to take up the game. The ben­e­fits are in­nu­mer­able, but one mis­take in a volatile re­gion could send the game back many years.

Naz­mul Has­san, BCB pres­i­dent, hasn't yet made a big state­ment with­out back­ing it with facts. His as­ser­tion on the sig­nif­i­cance of the next three months for Bangladesh, as a re­sult, holds a lot of mean­ing.Has­san claims to have crossed the first of many hur­dles by con­vinc­ing Sri Lan­ka and Pak­istan to take a pos­i­tive view of their vis­its to Bangladesh. Most poignant­ly, how­ev­er, he be­lieves that de­spite their ef­forts of per­sua­sion, one small in­ci­dent be­fore the tour­na­ment could de­stroy Bangladesh crick­et. There are ob­vi­ous­ly two ways to view this state­ment. The easy route would be note that he seems un­con­vinced of Bangladesh's se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause al­though he is a Bangladeshi, he seems to be giv­ing a neg­a­tive view of his coun­try­men's abil­i­ty to main­tain the peace or se­cu­ri­ty over the next cou­ple months. There won't be many to blame him.

My dis­cus­sion with at least one mem­ber of the West In­dies Crick­et Board did not leave me con­fi­dent that the West In­dies will be go­ing to Dha­ka to play their games. He said that as far as he is con­cerned, the se­ries should not be played there be­cause safe­ty has to be the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty. He went fur­ther to ask what the crick­et boards across the world would tell the peo­ple in some­thing goes wrong. Well, one hopes that good sense pre­vails and all stake­hold­ers in Bangladesh can re­al­ize the dam­age that could re­sult from coun­tries not tour­ing there. Both po­lit­i­cal par­ties have been meet­ing with the BCB and di­a­logue is on­go­ing. In the mean­time, they have made pub­lic calls to their sup­port­ers to keep the peace and to look at the larg­er pic­ture.How­ev­er, when one wants to make a state­ment the best way to do so is by do­ing it in the full pres­ence of the me­dia. With the world's eyes trained on Bangladesh with the me­dia present, it makes the sit­u­a­tion preg­nant with pos­si­bil­i­ties for some­one to make a state­ment.I al­so want to ap­plaud the crick­et au­thor­i­ties in Sri Lan­ka. In to­day's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, which is fierce, Sri Lan­ka crick­et has de­cid­ed to throw their sup­port be­hind Bangladesh. If the Asia Cup and World T20 is not played in Bangladesh, it is like­ly to go to Sri Lan­ka.So the Sri Lankans stand to ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly if Bangladesh is not able to host the event. Rather than com­pete against their ri­vals, how­ev­er, the Sri Lankans have in­stead de­cid­ed to throw their sup­port be­hind the Bangladeshis, say­ing that in days gone by when teams did not want to tour Sri Lan­ka be­cause of vi­o­lence, Bangladesh was will­ing to make such tours.Still, what­ev­er hap­pens, I am sad to say that the fu­ture of both of these tour­na­ments lies not in the boards but a fool, or group of them.