17 October 1998
Saber appeals to Khaleda Zia
Our Sports Reporter
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), hosts of the Wills International Cup
to be held at the Bangabandhu National Stadium from October 24, have
urged the Leader of the Opposition and Chairperson of Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP), Begum Khaleda Zia, to consider withdrawing
tomorrow's day-long hartal to facilitate the England and Zimbabwe
teams to reach their hotel safely. The two teams will be the first of
the nine Test-playing nations participating in the meet to arrive in
the city.
BNP gave a call for a dawn-to-dusk hartal on Thursday after their
application seeking allotment of the Paltan Maidan for staging a
hunger strike was turned down by the National Sports Council (NSC).
Talking to a group of newsmen at the BCB office last night after an
executive committee meeting of the board, Deputy Minister for Shipping
and the board president Saber Hossain Chowdhury said, "I have written
a letter to Begum Khaleda Zia on behalf of State Minister for Youth
and Sports and myself requesting her to withdraw the hartal for the
prestige of the country because the two teams will arrive tomorrow."
"I hope and pray that BNP will reconsider our request and withdraw the
hartal."
When asked how the teams will be transferred to their hotel if the
hartal is not called off, an optimistic Saber said that they were
confident that BNP would postpone the hartal.
"Otherwise there will be special security arrangements to bring them
to their hotel from ZIA," added Saber.
Zimbabwe will arrive tomorrow in the morning while England will come
later in the afternoon.
PM heads Organising Committee
Saber also revealed that an Advisory Committee and an Organising
Committee for the Wills International Cup were formed in yesterday's
meeting.
The Advisory Committee includes all the members of the Parliamentary
Committee for Sports, the Mayor of Dhaka City Corporation Mohammad
Hanif, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury, State
Minister for Jute AK Faizul Haque, State Minister for LGRD Mofazzal
Hossain Chowdhury Maya and three BNP MPs--former Finance Minister
Saifur Rahman, former State Minister for Sports Sadeq Hossain and Maj
(retd) Hafizuddin.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be the Chief Patron of the 36-member
Organising Committee which will have three Patrons in Foreign Minister
Abdus Samad Azad, Finance Minister Shah AMS Kibria and State Minister
for Youth and Sports Obaidul Quader.
The BCB boss will be the president of the committee while the other 31
members of the board have been included in the committee as per their
posts in the BCB.
Saber further informed that although the EC meeting of the board was
supposed to pass budgets of all the sub-committees of the Wills
International Cup, it did not because of certain problems.
"We have asked our finance sub-committee to approve the budgets on a
temporary basis. The sub-committee will sit tomorrow morning with all
the sub-committee chairmen and member-secretaries. We ( BCB) hope to
approve that in our next meeting," said Saber.
Source :: The Bangladesh Daily Star (https://www.dailystarnews.com)