DHAKA: Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is set to give a show-cause notice to Test and T20 captain Shakib Al Hasan due to his contract with the telecom company Grameenphone.
According to a report published by one of the leading Bengali newspaper Kaler Kantha on Saturday, BCB President Nazmul Hasan Papon said that they will take action if Shakib is unable to provide a satisfactory reply in this regard.
Grameenphone announced on October 22 that the ace all-rounder Shakib has joined them as their brand ambassador to inspire and build an empowered digital society.
According to BCB’s players’ agreement, a cricketer under a national contract cannot join a telecom company in such a way.
“He cannot make this agreement with a telecom company and the reason why a player cannot sign this kind of agreement is clearly stated in our contract paper,” BCB president Nazmul Hasan told Bengali daily Kaler Kantha.
“Robi [Telecom] was our title sponsor and Grameenphone did not bid and instead they made a contract with few cricketers by paying the one or two crores taka. So the board lost TK90cr in three years in the end and had to suffer for this.
“It cannot happen again,” he said. “So players are being informed about it on contract paper. I think even from the ministry they are being told not to do any agreement with the telecom company without informing us.”
The BCB president said: “Then how come Shakib does this agreement without informing us? And look at the timing; it was done when there were no matches being played, as the player had called for a strike.”
The board is going to pursue legal action, he said.
“We will seek compensation from the company as well as from the player. I heard about it [on October 23] and asked for a legal notice to be sent to Grameenphone to claim compensation. I also asked for a letter to be sent to Shakib for an explanation as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury said that they were not aware of this deal with Grameenphone, though every cricketer under the national contract must take permission from the board for their commercials.
“‘We were not aware of his [Shakib’s] deal with Grameenphone. Usually what happens is we do not encourage players to have any commercial dealings with a company that can have a conflict with the national team sponsors,” said Nizamuddin.
“Right now we have Unilever as our national team sponsors but the deal is expected to end soon. If any of our players are endorsing any telecom company, then the other telecom companies will not be interested to bid for the national team when our present deal is over with Unilever,” he said to Cricbuzz.
(Agencies)
Comment