Bangladesh will not travel to India to play in next month’s T20 World Cup, its cricket board said on Thursday, a day after the game’s global governing body rejected the country’s plea to shift its games to Sri Lanka.
“Our only demand is to play the World Cup — but not in India,” Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) President Aminul Islam told reporters after a meeting with the country’s cricketers and sports adviser Asif Nazrul, effectively ruling out their participation in the tournament.
A day earlier, 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.
According to Cricinfo, Islam also said: “We will go back to the ICC with our plan to play in Sri Lanka. 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. It will be their loss … ICC is calling Sri Lanka co-hosts. They are not co-hosts. It is a hybrid model. Some of the things I heard in the ICC meeting was shocking,“ Islam said, according to Cricinfo.
“There is no scope for changing our decision,” Nazrul said, adding that 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.”
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.
