Professional on field, but off it?
The professional set-up of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is equipped enough to run the most affluent sport body of the country smoothly, even if the board of directors including the BCB president desire to go on a sabbatical.
That was the kind of impression this writer had gotten during his recent visit to the BCB headquarters. But the events which transpired in the last few weeks or before hardly justify that claim.
It's better to start with a hardly noticeable untoward incident during the Tigers' promotional event at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday, when a shooting unit of national team's sponsors Robi was seen engaged in a heated exchange with the working photo journalists. It all started when people engaged in the shooting aggressively turned to the photo journalists, claiming that they were not even supposed to enter the ground, let alone take photographs of the cricketers at that time.
If their claims were justified then the onus was on the board's highly paid professionals to have circulated it properly, which could have easily avoided such as embarrassing incident and that too in front of the members of the touring South Africa cricket team.
If that is something one can easily duck by blaming the pensive press, the re-appointment of Khaled Mahmud as the national team's manager for the South Africa series through a text message; pending issues of renewing the contracts of two national selectors and Tigers' lone computer analyst Nasir Ahmed and sitting on the contract papers of 80 odd cricketers recommended to be drafted into the board's payroll portray a shabby picture of professionalism in the board.
National selectors Habibul Bashar and Minhazul Abedin's two-year contracts with the board expired on June 30 and so did Nasir Ahmed's. They are now working under the president's directive to 'continue until the board's next meeting' for a concrete decision.
It's not the job of a president to take notice of such trivial issues. It's the job of a board's CEO to take notice of these things well in advance, a regulation practice for any chief executive of a smooth-functioning organisation.
For someone who has little knowledge of the BCB constitution, it is amazing to learn how forward thinking it is, allowing its CEO a full range of authority not only to execute any plan but to entrust him with the power of recommending a guideline for any issues relating to the development of Bangladesh's cricket.
Our incumbent BCB CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury is a nice gentleman and has been associated with the board for a long time in different capacities. But in a cutthroat professional world a CEO should be more than a gentleman. His first and foremost effort should be to keep everything in black and white. It is not understandable why he failed to put those three cases on the agenda of the board meeting that took place two months ago.
It is also a sheer callousness on the part of his team for failing to complete the signing formalities of those 80 odd cricketers two months after the recommendation of the chief selector. It was learnt that those first-class cricketers have not even been paid for months. If that is true then those professionals sitting in the cosy confinement of the BCB headquarters hardly deserve a pay cheque every month.
Mahmud's appointment as Tigers' manager has so far been a case of series-by-series. But his latest appointment through a text message can be a peculiar food for thought for any decent professional outfit.
The board often cries for its professionals on the playing field to live up to their billing. But it is running the risk of losing a moral ground to press for that if its other professionals off it fail to perform.