Bangladesh cricket board (BCB) President Aminul Islam has opted not to travel to Colombo to attend the India-Pakistan T20 World Cup clash on February 15.
The last-minute change comes after Aminul only recently hinted that he saw the game as an opportunity to break the ice with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in the wake of the tripartite meeting involving BCB, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and representatives of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in Lahore to resolve the ICC-PCB standoff following Bangladesh’s elimination from the T20 World Cup.
Aminul was a central figure in the negotiations at the Lahore meeting and convinced Pakistan to change its position on boycotting the February 15 clash against India in Colombo, which the PCB had said was an expression of solidarity with BCB following their unjust expulsion from the tournament as the ICC rejected the request to shift Bangladesh’s matches from India.
The ICC had officially invited Aminul to attend the big match at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. However, Aminul changed his mind at the last minute as Bangladesh was not involved in the match.
“I spoke to Aminul Islam. Since Bangladesh are not in it, he said, ‘Why should I go there just to watch the match?’ So he refused,” Iftekhar Rahman, chairman of the BCB refereeing committee, told Cricbuzz on Saturday. “Maybe at first he said he would go but later he realized that if Bangladesh don’t play then what’s the point of going unnecessarily,” he said.
He had earlier confirmed that the ICC wanted its “key stakeholders” to remain in Colombo for the big clash.
“The ICC has taken a decision. The main stakeholders of the ICC are these five Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan) and for the India-Pakistan match on the 15th of the World Cup, they want representatives of all five Asian countries to be on the field together, watch the match together and talk to each other,” Aminul was quoted as saying by leading Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo.
“You can think of it as something like that (an icebreaker between us),” he had said.
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