|| CF Correspondent ||

The Bangladesh Cricket Board said that they are surprised by the unexpected move taken by Robi as they terminated their deal despite running it till 2019.

BCB official said that they will impose a clause in the national player’s contract that will suggest they are not going to be part of sponsors that can have conflict with their national sponsors.

“We are surprised,” BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury told reporters on Monday.

“We were working on settling down the matter but on the same note we wanted some breathing space as well but they all of a sudden  decided to terminate their deal,” he said

Robi Axiata, country’s leading Telecom Company decided to terminate their sponsorship deal with Bangladesh Cricket Board without completing their two-year term forced BCB to this route for the future.

According to BCB, Robi had their reservation regarding some of their leading players as they were associated with conflicting brand as per their personal sponsorship deal.

Mashrafee bin Murtaza, Tamim Iqbal, and Mushfiqur Rahim had been part of Grameenphone campaign while Sakib al Hasan was associated with Banglalink.

Both Graeenphone and Banglalink are considered to be two leading rivals of Robi as they are also among leading telecom operators of the country.

“We decided in future our cricketers cannot be associated with conflicting brand of our national sponsors,”BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury told reporters on Monday.

“Robi had reservation regarding our players association with conflicting brand,” he said.

Nizamuddin added that asking the players to dismiss their individual sponsorship deal overnight was something that they could not implement as a lot of investment goes after any leading cricketers ink a deal with the sponsors.

“You cannot ask anyone to terminate their individual sponsorship deal because after such a deal is done these brands go for massive activation to promote them,” he said.

“Still we were working to settle down the matter. Shakib did not renew his agreement where as Tamim also were not continuing his deal. The only deal that still remains in place was of Mashrafee Mortaza that we believed would have been called off in due time but unfortunately they did not give us that time,” he added.