October 24 (India Today) – Placing a 13-point demand afresh, striking Bangladeshi cricketers on Wednesday said they were ready to sit with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) to discuss their demands.
On behalf of the cricketers, Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Mustafizur Rahman Khan came up with the information while briefing reporters after a meeting of the cricketers at a Gulshan hotel in the evening.
He said the cricketers will go to the BCB on Wednesday night (Oct. 23).
Mustafizur said the cricketers will keep abstaining from cricket until their demands are met by the cricket board. “They’ll resume their cricket-related activities as soon as their demands are met. They’re eager to return to cricket,” he said, adding that the cricketers have no intention to skip the upcoming India tour.
With their previous 11 demands, the crickets added two more — sharing the revenue the BCB generates and implementing all the demands for women’s cricket as well.
A total of 49 cricketers, Test and T20 Captain Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Tamim Iqbal, Mahmudullah Riyad, Abdur Razzak, Soumya Sarkar, Mominul Haque, Sabbir Ahmed, Mustafizur Rahman, Rubel Hossain, Alok Kapali and Tushar Imran, were present at the press conference.
After the 13-point demand was placed by Mustafizur, Shakib spoke at the press conference.
“We wanted to announce our demands in a better way and that’s why we took some time. We heard that the BCB wants us to meet them and talk about the crisis. We’ll definitely go to the BCB and talk to them. But before that, we have to discuss the next course of action,” he said.
With this, the move of the cricketers, the current crisis of Bangladesh cricket has taken a new turn.
Earlier, the BCB informed the media that they are up to talk to the cricketers to reach a solution.
On Monday, the cricketers placed an 11-point demand and announced that they will not take part in cricketing activities unless their demands were met.
These demands include immediate resignation of the president and secretary of Cricket Welfare Association of Bangladesh (CWAB), returning to the previous model of Dhaka League, and the BPL from the next year, increasing the match fee in the first-class cricket to 1 lakh from present Tk 35,000, hiking the salaries of the national cricketers, local coaches, physios, trainers and groundsmen, arranging more domestic cricket events, fixing stable domestic calendar, clearing cricketers’ dues for the Dhaka League and ensuring cricketers’ opportunities to play more foreign leagues.
