It was nice to read people's opinons on the sorry state of Bangladeshi cricket. A few readers touched on the role of the BCB, but I feel they did not go far enough. While players, coaches and even fans (for their unrealistic expectations?) share the blame for the current debacle, I think the BCB should be singled out for special treatment. Much as the country has slid into relative anarchy over the years due to the AL/BNP stranglehold on our lives, so too has sports such as football, hockey and cricket for the same reasons. Cricket is run mafia-style by politicians and their offspring.

Even ex-cricketers soon begin to sound and act like those politicians. Just as the country is mismanaged by successive governments, now our cricket is showing symptoms of what happens when you cannot manage an organization properly. Setting a vision, planning for and using resources wisely, demonstrating accountability and professionalism, making decisions, growing the size and quality of the talent base, marketing a brand - the BCB lacks in all departments and appears to be completely incompetent. If they are on the job only to line their own pockets, as many believe the Test status has created the opportunity for, then I don't see how they can continue to profit when their product is so poor. Perhaps therein lies the real tragedy - a culture of being content to profit any way you can from a poor product without seeing a real need to improve it.

You can fire coaches, get new players with better skills and build bigger stadiums, but without a cohesive vision at the top it cannot improve anytime soon. If the team started winning soon, we would forget all this, but they are poorly equipped to have any immediate chance of success. Sports really has an effect on a nation's psyche, even in Bangladesh, where people have many other things to worry about. With cricket being one of the few positive things to come out of Bangladesh in recent times, and with the way it is run by the BCB today, God help us all. As with so many other potential successes in our country, we sadly tend to take a good thing and squeeze the life out of it.

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