Mohammadi News Agency News – Features – Photo
MNA Sports Desk: As news agency reported, ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) security chief, Reg Dickason, fears for travel safety on tour in Bangladesh.
Dickason flew back from Dhaka at the weekend after a fortnight’s inspection of India and Bangladesh, along with the head of ECB cricket operations, John Carr, and the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers Association, David Leatherdale.
The three-man delegation was given many assurances of security by the Bangladesh Cricket Board and the country’s home ministry ahead of the tour, which will consist of two Tests and three one-day internationals.
The job of Dickason – a former Queensland policeman before he became Australian cricket’s head of security then England’s – is to judge how worthwhile those assurances are.
It is understood that Dickason’s chief concern is not so much the hotels where England will be staying in Dhaka and Chittagong, or the grounds in those two cities, as they can be cordoned off by the police and military.
The most potentially dangerous parts of a cricket tour are the journeys from the airport to the team hotel and from the team hotel to the ground, especially in crowded Asian cities where it is humanly impossible to secure all the buildings overlooking the roads.
During the World Cup of 2011 the West Indies team bus was hit by stones in Dhaka in spite of assurances of security.
However, the Bangladesh board president, Mustafa Kamal, said at the time: “The teams were moving away from the ground to the hotel, and there were enough convoys.”
