Aminul Islam was Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president for all of six months, before the government dissolved his 18-member executive body. ESPNcricinfo looks at five factors that resulted in Aminul’s short reign.
Missing the T20 World Cup
Bangladesh’s refusal to play in India was the biggest setback during Aminul’s reign as BCB president. It was a political decision as Asif Nazrul, the government sports adviser at the time, announced at the outset that he wouldn’t allow the team to go to India. Such a decisive call from a senior government official left the BCB in a tight spot from the beginning of negotiations as they sought to play the tournament in Sri Lanka.
Still, the ICC engaged the BCB in several discussions, including a meeting in Dhaka. Aminul, however, remained surprisingly reticent with the ICC, where he has worked for several years. He didn’t seek out support from any other members during negotiations, which was evident when Bangladesh got only Pakistan’s support in the January 21 ICC meeting which decided to remove Bangladesh from the event.
Towards the end of the interim government’s tenure, Nazrul u-turned and claimed it wasn’t him, but the BCB that decided not to go to India to play the T20 World Cup.
Bangladesh’s only solace was PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi strong-arming the ICC into not punishing the BCB. But that was no consolation for Bangladeshi cricketers, who were left dismayed for missing out on an ICC event.
Backing Najmul, not players
Frustration grew with the Aminul-led BCB when director M Najmul Islam made disparaging comments about players in January. The players called for a boycott of BPL matches immediately. The images of Aminul standing in the middle of an empty Shere Bangla National Stadium that day underlined the deep fracture within the country’s cricketing fraternity. It was also symbolic of how Aminul stayed out of negotiations for most of that day.
When the players called off the boycott under the condition that Najmul would be removed from the BCB, Aminul not only brought back Najmul, but also afforded him the chief guest’s seat in the president’s box the following day.
Putting player livelihoods on hold
Every year, the Dhaka league system is the main financial earner for nearly 1600 professional cricketers. It is the main talent pool from which both the men’s and women’s representative teams are selected in Bangladesh. But an early misstep in Aminul’s tenure was when he stalled meetings with the Dhaka clubs who were refusing to play the leagues, in protest against what they said were illegal elections that put Aminul in place in the first place.
Between October and December, he stalled meetings with Mohammad Mithun, the players’ body president, as well. Mithun was desperately trying to resolve the situation as the start of the league season neared, trying to get the clubs to sit with the BCB and work out a solution.
When two of those leagues were finally held in December and March, half the teams didn’t participate, leaving those players without their seasonal earnings. The BCB arranged a short tournament for some of the players, but it was lip service.
One of Tamim Iqbal’s first moves as board head was to meet the Dhaka Premier League clubs, who have agreed to start the league in May. One of the lower division leagues is also set to begin shortly, while the board is trying to convince the clubs to play those tournament that were held partially, again.
The election scandal
The Bangladesh government found “serious abuse of power” in the BCB elections held in October last year. While it is not the first time BCB elections have faced allegations of manipulation, this was the first time a sitting Bangladesh government thought allegations serious enough to require an independent investigation committee.
The findings were not good for Aminul. They said he issued a letter to change voters from the districts and divisions category of the election, something he admitted to in a TV interview shortly before the government disclosed its findings.
The committee also found evidence of Aminul taking a unilateral decision to pick ten voters in another category and that the election commission allowed Faruque Ahmed to register as a voter despite missing the deadline.
Aminul’s misplaced priorities
Aminul said developing his “triple century” project was one of the main reasons he extended his stay in the BCB. He had initially announced that he would be president for a short stint, a “short T20 innings” as he famously said. He had insisted in several public and private discussions that he had no intention to stay for long. This u-turn within a week in late August, took many by surprise and went against Aminul’s mostly clean image from his playing days.
In May last year, he marketed himself as the first BCB president with experience of working in the ICC. There is little doubt about his professionalism but increasingly, he isolated himself in aspects of the board’s decision-making.
His overemphasis on “spreading cricket across Bangladesh” was re-inventing the wheel, given that it has spread quite well across the land; it is well known that the BCB’s only real success in the last 20 years was their cricket development programme. He did, though, bring in experts like Alex Marshall (integrity), Simon Taufel (umpiring) and Tony Hemming (pitch), moves that were geared towards structural development.
