Bangladesh will not travel to India to play in next month’s T20 World Cup, its cricket board said on Thursday, effectively ruling the country out of the tournament.
According to ESPN Cricinfo, the decision was announced after a meeting in Dhaka between Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) President Aminul Islam Bulbul, CEO Nizamuddin, Sports Adviser Asif Nazrul and several national team players.
Read more: Canada’s Carney fires back at Trump after Davos speech
“Our only demand is to play the World Cup – but not in India,” the BCB president told reporters.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced that it would not be making any changes to the World Cup schedule or groups, days after Bangladesh requested that its matches be moved to Sri Lanka after refusing to play in India.
“We will go back to the ICC with our plan to play in Sri Lanka,” the BCB president said.
“They did give us a 24-hour ultimatum but a global body can’t really do that. ICC will miss out on 200 million people watching the World Cup (if Bangladesh is axed). It will be their loss…”
Read more: Blake Lively and Taylor Swift’s texts exposed in lawsuit against Justin Baldoni
“Bangladesh is a cricket-loving nation. If a country of nearly 200 million people misses the World Cup, the ICC will lose a huge audience,” the BCB’s Bulbul said.
“Cricket is entering the Olympics in 2028, Brisbane in 2032, India is bidding for 2036. Excluding a major cricket-loving country like Bangladesh would be a failure,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nazrul said, “There is no scope for changing our decision.”
He said Bangladesh’s security concerns “did not arise from speculation or theoretical analysis”.
“They arose from a real incident – where one of our country’s top players was forced to bow to extremists, and the Indian cricket board asked him to leave India,” he said.
“We are hopeful that ICC will give us the opportunity to play in Sri Lanka,” Nazrul said.
Following yesterday’s decision by the ICC, Islam had said Bangladesh players were keen to play in the World Cup and that he was “hoping for a miracle from the ICC.
“Who doesn’t want to play in the World Cup?” Islam said on Wednesday.
“Bangladesh players want to play the World Cup. The Bangladesh government wants Bangladesh to play the World Cup. But we don’t think India is safe for our players,” Islam had said.
Bangladesh announced on Jan 4 that it would not play its T20 World Cup matches in India after its player Mustafizur Rahman was released by his Indian Premier League (IPL) team amid growing tensions between the two countries. Subsequently, Bangladesh had “formally requested” the ICC to shift their games to Sri Lanka.
The T20 World Cup begins on February 7 with Bangladesh in England’s Group C. The team is scheduled to play all of their group matches in Kolkata and Mumbai.
