Bangladesh News

Bangladesh cricket team will take on Australia in the first of three one-day internationals at Darwin on Saturday. The match is scheduled to start at 6 o’clock in the morning.

Usually the ESPN-STAR Sports network brings live coverage of cricket matches down under to this part of the world. Checking the programme schedules on the network’s website, we found that neither ESPN nor STAR Sports would be telecasting the series. We were doing so to let our valued readers know which channel was going to show the matches.

We then turned to the state-run Bangladesh Television to get the information if they have taken any initiative to show the matches to crores of viewers in this country. We tried to contact BTV’s deputy director general of programme (DDG-P), who is supposed to have information in this regard, over telephone yesterday afternoon but to no avail. She/he had already left the office, although we phoned before 5pm.

Then we were looking for the PA to DDG-P, hoping that he could update us about it. Someone — who identified himself as Fazlul Haque, an MLSS — picked the phone and requested us to call again after 10/15 minutes as the PA was in the washroom. We duly did and that person again requested to call 10 minutes later as the man in question was still in the toilet. We reminded him that it was already well past 5pm and if he called again after 10 minutes, would it be too late to get him? Haque replied, “No problems. PA saheb will be here.”

Here starts the BTV saga.

When we called again after about 10 minutes the PA saheb is gone. Haque claimed that he informed the PA about The Daily Star reporter’s phone call, but he ignored it and left the office.

Dear readers, we looked at the other satellite channels’, which usually show live cricket, broadcast schedules but could not confirm who was going to give coverage of the series. The BTV has a TV Schedule of their own on its website as well. We request you the readers to have a look at it!

The world is only moving forward and so should be the motto of the BTV. And a little more sense of responsibility and belonging will take us on that road.