A Hundred and Fifty Cricketers in Cox's Bazar, Four Members in Dhaka: The Unfinished Arithmetic of BCB's Committee

Monday's date may have been anything, but the picture was the same. Around a hundred women cricketers gathered in Cox's Bazar for domestic tournaments, and in Dhaka a five-member committee — with only four members. That gap struck me at first glance. In the game we argue endlessly over the arithmetic of eleven players, but here the count was incomplete, and there was no counter to tell you which over had been left unfinished.

The most interesting thing about this story is not what the statement said. The Bangladesh Cricket Board has formed an independent committee for sexual harassment complaints — five members, four of whom are named publicly. The fifth, a former cricketer, will be appointed 'in due course'. That 'in due course' is where I stopped the tape. For thirty years I have read sports news through a broadcast lens, and I was taught that the sentence not spoken often says more than the one that was.

The most solid part of the committee's design is that no board employee or official has been included. This is no formality. If the investigative channel is the same institution within which the complaint has been filed, trust becomes nearly impossible for the complainant — especially when her professional life rests on that institution's contracts, selections and facilities. The appointment of external members, with legal expertise and experience in women's rights, is the first concrete step toward 'dealing with' a complaint rather than merely 'hearing' it. I have seen bulletin boards for years that said 'a committee has been constituted' — complete on paper, empty on the ground. This time there is a difference in design, and it should be recorded.

The second part I found most relevant is hidden in the statement of a committee member that came publicly — that players carry a 'fear', and that this fear must be removed. That sentence is an admission, and in the language of cricket administration such admissions are rare. It means the committee's existence is not the goal; the goal is that a player picks up the phone. And here my old habit kicks in — I want to look past the noise of the crowd at the person sitting there saying nothing. Until at least one complaint is filed, the committee is correct on paper and absent on the ground.

And here that image returns from which I began. Around a hundred women cricketers gathered in Cox's Bazar — this is not just a tournament's arithmetic. It is an opportunity cricket administration rarely gets: a concentrated, accessible body of players, all in one place. If a policy is to be put into practice, there is hardly a better stage. The statement mentions a workshop and an educational class, a website banner — all of it seems woven around this same opportunity. But the committee does not have its fifth member, and that is the one member who might have been 'one of their own' in the players' eyes. A former cricketer, who played on the same field, brings a familiarity in her yes or no that legal language cannot.

This is the committee's biggest internal weakness, and it should not be hidden. The design is strong, but not complete. A body anchored in a court order and independent members increases the likelihood of long-term survival, but paper durability alone does not build trust. Trust is built by the first complaint that has been redressed.

In my old copy there is a long list of such efforts — committees that were notified, photographed, and then not mentioned even in the next budget meeting. The difference is that most of them did not have a court order, nor a public announcement like this. This time both exist. It also means that if this committee quietly shuts down, there will be no excuses left. But what is visible so far is the first page of an open book, not the final chapter.

I must say one thing clearly at the end, because in sports news we are very quick to turn things black and white. This committee is not in itself a victory, and not a sham either. It is the beginning of a process, whose real scoreboard is currently blank. The day a cricketer from Cox's Bazar can say she filed a complaint and was heard, that day will be the real assessment of this story. Until then we can only count that the committee is short of one member, and there are a hundred players on the ground. The arithmetic is clear, and the arithmetic is not yet complete.