Creating sensation among millions of cricket enthusiasts across the country, national team captain Shakib Al Hasan on Monday categorically brought match-fixing allegation in the country’s domestic cricket. He raised the allegation from a press conference at Sher-e-Bangla Stadium on Monday, though he did not make it clear who are directly involved in the shameful malpractice.
At the press conference, most of the country's professional players had put forth an 11-point demand and announced that they have gone on strike, boycotting all cricketing activities till their demands are met. Being the national team captain, Shakib’s allegation should be thoroughly and judicially investigated to make the country’s cricket free of any stigma, cricket fans observed.
“We all know the sorry state of our first, second and third division cricket," Shakib said at the briefing, adding, “In many cases, we know which team will win and which team will lose before the match actually starts.” “So how will our players’ quality increase? This thing hugely affects a player’s confidence”, he lamented.
Interestingly, in the yesterday’s BCB press conference when this question was asked to Papon he cleverly denied it. When asked by the journalist about his stance on the match fixing allegation, Papon said, “This is a complete lie. Then why the players’ did stepped onto the field during the second T20 match against Afghanistan in the tri-series T20 recently, if they knew they will lose the match.”
Papon’s answer was a misrepresentation of the actual question as Shakib raised the match fixing issue regarding the domestic leagues of first and second division. It was not regarding the international matches. Meanwhile, on this match fixing and corruption charges, former Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Saber Hossain Chowdhury said on Tuesday that match fixing is widespread in the country.
In a post on his Twitter account yesterday, Saber Hossain said, “BCB is only national sporting body in the world that promotes institutionalized match fixing,” “Flagged this issue many times myself,” he said.
