By Mohammad Isam

Players arriving for Twenty20 matches in a helicopter is an often-used gimmick. But for Shahriar Nafees, Mushfiqur Rahim and Alok Kapali, a chopper will actually be necessary to get them to the logo unveiling ceremony of the Bangladesh Premier League on time.

The three players are icon players for their respective sides in the upcoming Premier League but will all be involved in matches in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League on December 29, and could have less than an hour to make it to the Radisson hotel in Dhaka for the Premier League event.

Mushfiqur will be playing at the Fatullah Cricket Stadium, 40km south of Dhaka, for Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club while Nafees and Kapali will face off at the BKSP, to the northwest of Dhaka, for Prime Doleshwar Sporting Club and Gazi Tank Cricketers respectively. Since the logo unveiling programme begins at 6:00pm and the Premier Division matches could end as late as 5:30pm, the commute from both venues to Hotel Radisson by road will be impractical given Dhaka’s traffic situation, which is particularly bad on Thursday afternoons.

"It is practically impossible for them to reach the event on time, so we will have a helicopter pick them up from one ground and then go to the other. They will be dropped off at the Army Stadium near the hotel," BCB media committee chairman Jalal Yunus said.

The players will still have a mile to cover after arriving at the Army Stadium. Since hardly anything moves on the Airport Road at that hour, they may be late for the ceremony anyway.

After scoring the fastest Test century at the home of cricket for 20 years, Tamim Iqbal revealed he had an unlikely source of inspiration: Geoffrey Boycott. The former England opener was on television the night before saying Bangladesh should not be playing Test cricket. Well, Tamim happened to catch that segment and was none too pleased about it.

"I felt very bad and could not sleep until 1am,” he said. “It made me determined to do something to show him. They are the senior cricketers whom we respect. We expect them to respect us as well. I wanted to prove to the world that we are getting there.”

Tamim defended his team’s improvement over the last five years and went on to compare the Bangaldeshi side to a chocolate company that wants to compete with Cadbury. “If you start a chocolate company you can't compete with Cadbury in the first 10 years because they are a big company."

With his 94-ball century behind him, Tamim showed there were no hard feelings, saying he would love to be coached by Boycott. "Maybe he could coach me defence. There are lots of guys who attack and they can teach me that. Geoff was a good defender I think."

The picture seemed a sure shot for a caption competition but one Bangladesh national daily put their own spin on it to leave the Bangladesh Cricket Board seething. The picture showed team captain Shakib Al Hasan kneeling while in conversation with BCB president Mustafa Kamal at a function. The paper's caption said the captain was actually apologising in public for his reaction to Kamal’s earlier comments questioning the team’s commitment after a poor start to the year. Kamal’s comment and Shakib’s reaction occurred during a function to felicitate the team for its wins against West Indies and Zimbabwe last year.

The photo was published on successive days, which only peeved the BCB even more and eventually prompted them to issue a statement clarifying what the conversation was actually about. “The caption of the photo has been written based purely on assumption and was a totally false impression of the actual facts.,” the statement read. “The photo was taken during a conversation between the BCB president and the national team captain and was far from what the caption had indicated." The discussion, it said, was very cordial and at no stage was the captain made to apologise.

The statement did not answer one simple question: Couldn't they just find Shakib a chair?