The CEO of Asian Cricket Council, Syed Ashraful Huq has expressed concerns over the hosting of Asia Cup Cricket due to the ongoing political turmoil in the country.
Talking to a satellite channel yesterday he expressed current ongoing political unrest might have effect on the scheduled to take place in Dhaka in February.
The ACC official while talking to a private channel of the country informed that the tournament will need to be shifted to some other Asian country if the situation doesn’t improve.
“The tournament will take place on the given time but whether it will take place in Bangladesh is a question. This is mainly because of security reason. If the situation doesn’t improve, the tournament might be shifted to some other Asian country,” He added.
“None of the participating teams have yet showed concern to the ACC officially but they are aware that the situation in Bangladesh is not right at the moment. There is no reason to hide this and one cannot hide this because everything is very much clear and updated in the media,” he exclaimed.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board has recently expressed to held meeting with the leaders of two leading political parties and discuss the negatives impact on the upcoming international cricket events. Ashraf said this should be done as soon possible and also mentioned that such move might come handy.
“It was in 1988 that the first time the Asia Cup took place in Bangladesh. During that time whole country was protesting against the Ershad government. The than BCB president Anisul Islam Mahmud told me and Tanna (Tanvir Mazhar Islam) to go and meet the political leaders and discuss with them officially. We were able to convince them that the tournament will do good to our country. The political parties right away declared that there will be no demonstration during the tournament and we had a successful tournament,” informed Ashraf.
The former Bangladesh national cricketer is hopeful that the political unrest will cool off and the tourney will be held in Bangladesh.
“Seeing it in a Bangladeshi perspective we will want the tournament to take place here as it will do good both to the country and its cricket and also because a very good amount of crowd shows up in all the matches of the tournament. I honestly don’t think the tournament will get this much of crowd in any other country,” said Ashraf.
