Former Youth and Sports Adviser Asif Nazrul on Tuesday said he alone decided to keep Bangladesh out of the T20 World Cup in India – a claim he made before, and one a government inquiry backed up just hours earlier.
Bangladesh sat out the February-March tournament, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka, after the interim government cited security concerns following fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman's removal from the Indian Premier League. The Bangladesh Cricket Board had asked the ICC to shift Bangladesh's matches to Sri Lanka instead. The ICC said no.
A three-member committee formed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports after the current government took office submitted its 22-page report on Tuesday.
AKM Wali Ullah, an additional secretary at the ministry, led the panel, joined by former national captain and current chief selector Habibul Bashar and Supreme Court lawyer Faisal Dastgir.
The report avoids naming anyone outright, saying only that a decision of this weight should not have come down to one person. Reporters at the news conference were not satisfied with that. Pressed on who the committee actually meant, Dastgir said it was Asif Nazrul.
Wali Ullah was less willing to say it plainly. Asked who was responsible, he offered: "The decision was the government's." Asked again, he added: "The government's decision is why Bangladesh could not go and play. You can understand who is at fault."
The committee tried to reach former BCB President Aminul Islam but could not. It never spoke to Asif Nazrul or the ICC either. Instead, the findings rest mostly on a timeline of events, a ministry letter telling the BCB that Bangladesh would not travel to India over security concerns, and Asif Nazrul's own past remarks in interviews and on social media.
Dastgir insisted the committee was not out to assign blame – though its members clearly think Bangladesh should have played. "We think Bangladesh should have gone," he said.
Wali Ullah would not say whether the government made the right call, only that it reflected the circumstances at the time.
Asif Nazrul responded within hours on Facebook, calling the decision "essentially mine." He pointed out he had already said as much publicly, more than once, and asked why the ministry had bothered digging into it — and releasing a report — this long after the fact.
He defended the decision as a response to what he called an "insulting" move to drop Mustafiz from the IPL, on top of safety concerns for Bangladeshi players, journalists and fans travelling to India. The government did look at moving the matches elsewhere, he said, but nothing worked out.
Three things guided him, he said: Bangladesh's dignity, the safety of its people, and political stability ahead of the next election. "I think we made the right decision," he said, arguing Bangladesh's ties with India should rest on equal footing, not on what he called humiliation.
The committee said the episode had exposed real weaknesses, both inside the BCB and in how the country handled the diplomacy around it.
It laid out seven recommendations: keeping international sport out of political disputes, giving the BCB more autonomy, setting formal policies to protect players and supporters, and making clear who holds authority — and who talks to whom — when decisions like this one come up again.