A case of misplaced priorities?

In the wake of Bangladesh cricket team's historic series win against Pakistan on Sunday, a cabinet meeting, presided over by the prime minister, gave green signal to the proposal of building a new 70,000-seater stadium in Purbachal, exclusively for cricket. The meeting has reportedly decided, in principle, to turn the now home of cricket in Mirpur into an all-purpose venue once the construction of the new stadium is finished.

This initiative, on surface, might seem a positive one for cricket and for sports in general. But is it the wisest decision of all? If one digs a bit beneath the surface, it might not seem so.

There are two arguments to oppose this idea, first of which comes from the cricketers, cricket administrators and cricket-lovers themselves. Anyone who has witnessed or experienced the hardship of establishing the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium as the home of cricket would probably not welcome the move. The venue in Mirpur, with its state-of-the-art facilities, has not only become the home of Bangladesh's cricket but also has become the face of a positive Bangladesh. Why denigrate it to an all-purpose venue when we already have one such in Motijheel?

It was learnt that the decision followed a discussion about the lack of playgrounds in the capital for budding sportsmen. If that is the case, then a more appropriate decision might have been to free grounds from the encroachers or build new grounds altogether, not to build concrete structures which actually limit entry for the common.

The country already has seven purpose-built cricket venues and all of those have international match hosting rights. Do we really need one more international venue for cricket, especially if it comes at the expense of other sports which are neglected?

Football, which used to be the most popular sport of the country not too long ago, and still the most global of sports, is one such neglected sport in the country. While hefty amounts of money is poured into cricket by the International Cricket Council, the Bangladesh Cricket Board and the sponsors; football has to beg and borrow to run its activities because the funding it receives from the FIFA and the AFC is not sufficient and sponsors largely take a lukewarm approach towards it. Hence the football governing body, for the first time, placed a proposal before the government for allocating an annual budget for its development and daily activities. The budget, which was of Tk 39 crore initially, has been revised lately to an amount of Tk 20.6 crore; but there has been little positive response as yet. Given the important fixtures of the national football team over the next couple of years in the Asian Cup and World Cup Joint Qualifiers and the importance of making the academy in Sylhet a fully functional one, the amount asked for seems a quite valid one and a rather paltry one if compared to the expenditure that would take to build a 70,000-seater stadium.

Now there is no reason to believe that the money required to build the new stadium would come from a special fund, rather it would come from the budget allocation for sports, which would be generated through taxpayers' contribution. Will the taxpayers be at ease with the decision to construct a new cricket venue on the outskirts of Dhaka at the expense of the home of cricket and also at the expense of football?

It is common knowledge that our prime minister is a self-confessed sports enthusiast and that she comes from a family which was one of the early patrons of sports, especially football. Her father, the father of the nation, was a footballer and football lover himself. So it is our honest expectation that the idea of building the new stadium will be thought twice and that football's cause will not be overlooked.