Slow going by BCB

When the ad-hoc committee of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) sits for the fourth time in the cosy confinement of its management office in Gulshan today one thing is certain to haunt the policy-makers.
The new body was supposed to orchestrate a 'gameplan' to meet the growing demands of the most popular game of the country and as well as bring more dynamism that was missing in the latter part of the previous body.
True two months is not enough time to measure the success or failure of anything, let alone cricket, but the new committee of Chief of General Staff Maj Gen Sina Ibn Jamali has so far failed to make any headway into the problems that the board has inherited.
This committee started its journey along with two pressing issues that needed to be solved immediately. One was to appoint a new national team coach, a post vacant for the last four months. The other was to start the work for a permanent National Cricket Academy structure in Mirpur.
It seems that the new committee is totally clueless to find Dav Whatmore's successor after the three short-listed candidates -- John Harmer, Dave Houghton and Jamie Siddons -- withdrew their names from the race.
The board named a high-profile sub-committee to deal with the issue, but the noticeable achievement of it was interviewing a candidate (Harmer) in the last week of August.
On the other hand, it was repeatedly told by development committee chairman Lt Col M Abdul Latif Khan (retd) that they would start the work of the much-needed academy by September. But he is destined to miss the deadline.
Unfortunately, the future of the academy hinges on the acquisition of the stadium (a process that was initiated and then got stalled during the past board) from the National Sports Council (NSC).
The last committee had stopped the work citing the acquisition issue with the NSC although they made a benchmark sponsorship deal with Grameenphone in March this year.
The most important thing is that the development activities have been suffering heavily without the permanent structure of the academy.
Moreover, improvement of the National Cricket League is the most challenging issue for Bangladesh and it is inspiring that the budget for the competition this season has been increased a great deal to bring seriousness among the players.
But it appears that everything is handled loosely regarding this competition. The instant example is that the board made chaos while introducing the new system of naming the squads by the respective divisions themselves. For the last few years, the board simultaneously announced all six divisional squads but this time they deviated from the practice to give more power to the divisions.
But unfortunately it backfired as one division released their list, which was received by only one or two newspapers.
The board formed a number of sub-committees like committee for reviewing domestic structure, for reviewing the past financial deals, but it is not clear about their HR (Human Resource) policy to strengthen the professional setup, which is most important to run modern-day cricket.
If this board keeps faith in the corporate culture to run the show, then it should review the activities of a few professionals including the present chief executive officer.
It was expected that the ad-hoc committee would be more dynamic than their predecessors, otherwise the question will be raised: Why make change at all?