Who benefits from the silence?
Two issues surrounding Shakib Al Hasan's worsening finger injury scream out for attention. The first one is that Shakib wanted to have surgery on a persistent left little finger problem before the Asia Cup, but the board, medical staff and team management all thought that he could postpone it. The recklessness of that decision was proven when during the Asia Cup the finger became infected and he had to come home and have around 60 mg of pus removed to save his hand.
The second aspect is the deafening silence from the professionals employed by the board to look after the players' physical wellbeing. Physio Thihan Chandramohan, who was touring with the team in the United Arab Emirates during the Asia Cup, is the person responsible for detecting or not detecting Shakib's worsening condition. It can be assumed -- since Shakib himself was surprised when the infection was diagnosed in a Dhaka hospital -- that he failed to detect that the alarming swelling in Shakib's left hand was because of pus formation.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has ensured that determining culpability is a long way down the road as neither physio nor chief physician Debashish Chowdhury have spoken on the issue to inform the public of what went wrong. It was then learnt on Sunday -- the day Shakib said from Melbourne that surgery would take six months to a year -- that Debashish had been barred from speaking to the media. It is indeed curious that, with Shakib, Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mashrafe Bin Mortaza all currently recovering from some form of injury or the other, Chandramohan is yet to speak officially about the injuries -- something that was common practice for physios not too long ago.
In fact, the picture has become murkier still with some officials saying behind the scenes that the infection stemmed from Shakib taking steroid injections in Florida during the West Indies tour. Whether it was negligence or incompetence from the physio, Shakib's steroid injection or the board's desperation to get Shakib to play the Asia Cup, the public should be told because accountability is important if an organisation is to learn from mistakes.
This radio silence from those accountable for the players' wellbeing is not restricted to Shakib's issue. For around a week the media were reporting Tamim's fracture sustained in the opening game of the Asia Cup as a wrist fracture, even though it was later revealed to be a knuckle fracture. Even though he was seen with his left hand in a sling, the team management took two full days to announce that he would be ruled out of the tournament, which everyone already knew at that point.
Team manager for the tour and BCB director Khaled Mahmud, cricket operations chairman Akram Khan and chief selector Minhajul Abedin all talked about the injury, but not Chandramohan. Mahmud promised official statements from Chandramohan for two days following Tamim's injury but did not deliver.
Debashish spoke publicly on Shakib's issue on August 9, when Shakib returned from the tour of West Indies and said that surgery would be preferable before the Asia Cup. The physician said that the operation would likely take place in Australia and that Shakib could choose to do it before performing Hajj [in the third week of August]. BCB president Nazmul Hassan spoke later that day, expressing his preference that Shakib go under the knife after the Asia Cup because he could not 'imagine playing the Asia Cup without Shakib'.
On October 3, Debashish spoke about Shakib's surgery but was unclear about what caused the injury to deteriorate and was noncommittal about whether he needed surgery.
With an utter absence of accountability and transparency, room is created for speculation. Shakib was virtually pressured into playing the Asia Cup. Would the BCB boss have been able to apply the pressure if it was categorically said by a professional that he needed surgery sooner rather than later? Does the vacuum of information help authorities to put pressure on players to play with injuries, lest they are stigmatised as those who put self before country?
That certainly seemed the case in the pre-tournament press conference when captain Mashrafe and coach Steve Rhodes trivialised Shakib's condition, which suggests that they were not fully apprised of his situation.
There probably will never be satisfactory answers to those questions, but it is instructive that while Shakib gives updates from his hospital bed in Melbourne, the radio silence from the actual professionals continues.
