The Bangladesh Cricket Board has set to take legal action on skipper Shakib Al Hasan for breaching his contract to sign a sponsorship deal with the telecom company. According to BCB’s players’ agreement, a cricketer under a national contract cannot join any company.
BCB president Nazmul Hasan said that they will take strict action if he is unable to provide a satisfactory reply.
It was on Tuesday, Grameenphone announced that the country’s leading all-rounder joined them as their brand ambassador to inspire and build an empowered digital society.
“He cannot make this agreement [with a telecom company] and why he cannot make this agreement is clearly stated in our contract paper,” – BCB president Nazmul Hasan told on Saturday.
“Robi [Telecom] was our title sponsor and Grameenphone did not bid and instead they grabbed few cricketers by paying them TK One or Two Crores. What happened in the end? The board lost TK 90 Crores in three years,” – he said.
“Some players gained but the board had to suffer. It cannot happen. So they are informed about it on paper. I think even from the ministry they are told not to do any agreement with the telecom company without informing them while it is there in our contract paper. Then how come he does this agreement without informing us. And look at the timing. It was done when there was no cricket [due to strike]. Look at the audacity,” – he said.
“We are going into legal action. We cannot spare anyone in this regard. We will ask for compensation. We will seek compensation from the company as well as from the player. I heard about it [on October 23] and asked to sent legal notice to Grameenphone to claim compensation. I asked to send a letter to Shakib for an explanation. We must give him a chance to show he didn’t break the rule. To us, it seemed that it was something like ‘give a damn to the board’ and if that is the case we will take tough action,” – he added.
BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury told 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,” said Nizamuddin. “Usually what happens is we don’t encourage players to have any commercial dealings with a company that can have a conflict with the national sponsors,” – Nizamuddin said.
“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.
