BNP gave a call for a dawn-to-dusk hartal on Thursday after their application seeking allotment of the Paltan Maidan for staging a hunger strike was turned down by the National Sports Council (NSC).
Talking to a group of newsmen at the BCB office last night after an executive committee meeting of the board, Deputy Minister for Shipping and the board president Saber Hossain Chowdhury said, ``I have written a letter to Begum Khaleda Zia on behalf of State Minister for Youth and Sports and myself requesting her to withdraw the hartal for the prestige of the country because the two teams will arrive tomorrow.''
``I hope and pray that BNP will reconsider our request and withdraw the hartal.''
When asked how the teams will be transferred to their hotel if the hartal is not called off, an optimistic Saber said that they were confident that BNP would postpone the hartal.
``Otherwise there will be special security arrangements to bring them to their hotel from ZIA,'' added Saber.
Zimbabwe will arrive tomorrow in the morning while England will come later in the afternoon.
PM heads Organising Committee Saber also revealed that an Advisory Committee and an Organising Committee for the Wills International Cup were formed in yesterday's meeting.
The Advisory Committee includes all the members of the Parliamentary Committee for Sports, the Mayor of Dhaka City Corporation Mohammad Hanif, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury, State Minister for Jute AK Faizul Haque, State Minister for LGRD Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya and three BNP MPs--former Finance Minister Saifur Rahman, former State Minister for Sports Sadeq Hossain and Maj (retd) Hafizuddin.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be the Chief Patron of the 36-member Organising Committee which will have three Patrons in Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad, Finance Minister Shah AMS Kibria and State Minister for Youth and Sports Obaidul Quader.
The BCB boss will be the president of the committee while the other 31 members of the board have been included in the committee as per their posts in the BCB.
Saber further informed that although the EC meeting of the board was supposed to pass budgets of all the sub-committees of the Wills International Cup, it did not because of certain problems.
``We have asked our finance sub-committee to approve the budgets on a temporary basis. The sub-committee will sit tomorrow morning with all the sub-committee chairmen and member-secretaries. We ( BCB) hope to approve that in our next meeting,'' said Saber.