Cricketer Mohammad Naim. COURTESY
The ugly side of Bangladesh’s root level cricket came out in the open on Saturday when the Bangladesh Cricket Board held a hearing on an accusation that one of their district-level coaches had asked for a bribe from a player for a spot in the district team.
The accused Abu Taher is a BCB appointed coach at the Bagerhat district, who allegedly asked a Tk 30 thousand bribe from cricketer Mohammad Naim for a spot in the district Under-16 team. Naim claims that he didn’t pay him the sum and was subsequently left out of the team in spite of playing a match-winning half-century in one of the two trial matches. Naim lodged a complaint to the BCB and the board summoned him and the accused coach for a hearing at the BCB headquarters in Mirpur. Taher denied all the allegations while Naim said his account of what transpired and even presented a call recording of the coach asking Naim to drop his accusation before the hearing as evidence to support his claim. ‘Before forming the district team, he asked for Tk 30 thousand from me and another player. I thought he was joking because everybody knew about my poor economic condition,’ Naim told the media after the hearing on Saturday. ‘But when I didn’t get selected even after performing well, I understood that I was dropped for not paying up.
‘The coach has taken similar bribes from many others. But all of them are concerned about their careers, so they are not stepping forward,’ he added. Naim was part of a 35-member camp in Bagerhat, from where a 15-player team was selected to play three matches in Narail against other district teams and the best players from there would be selected in the Khulna divisional U-16 team. But Naim, an opening batter, didn’t make the cut in spite of top-scoring in the first match with highest 57, according to him, while a wicketkeeper who bats in the middle-order was selected as an opener.
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