“All of us know why we didn’t go, but that’s not documentary evidence. The document has to come from you, that’s why you were handed the responsibility.”

The press conference at the National Sports Council (NSC) office was roundabout over.

Barrister Faisal Dastagair, a Supreme Court lawyer and a part of the three-member committee appointed by the NSC to investigate Bangladesh’s absence from this year’s ICC T20 World Cup in India, thanked the media for their presence at Tuesday’s meet in a bid to wrap things up.

But a wave of protests from the journalists forced him to sit right back down.

The committee, formed in March, had just released a 22-page investigation report, titled “Why the Bangladesh Men’s Cricket Team Did Not Participate in the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup.”

The report contained a timeline of events, testimonies of 12 personnel, which included Bangladesh team cricketers, BCB officials, an ex-cricket administrator, and sports journalists, media clippings, and social media posts.

In the report’s ‘Final Assessment’ section, the committee listed five ‘Most Likely Root Causes’ ranked in order of impact level.

Political tensions between Bangladesh and India, ICC refusal to shift venues and Bangladesh government intervention ranked as the three causes ranking in ‘Very High’ in terms of impact level, followed by BCB negotiation failures as ‘High’ and communication breakdown as 'Medium’.

However, nowhere in the report did the committee explicitly pin the blame on former Youth and Sports Ministry Adviser Asif Nazrul – the person who had already accepted that it was his call that kept Bangladesh out of the World Cup.

Throughout the report, in testimonies, timeline breakdown and media clippings, Asif Nazrul was referred to as the person responsible, but the investigators refrained from directly pointing fingers at anyone, instead focusing on broad, systemic factors that led to Bangladesh’s omission from the World Cup.

Although there is little ambiguity in the report about who is responsible – for some journalists present in the room, it wasn’t good enough.

The quote used at the start of the piece belongs to one of them, demanding the naming of the individual responsible.

Faisal eventually met his demand and said, “Based on everything, we can come to this conclusion that the Youth and Sports Adviser at that time, Dr. Asif Nazrul, and the government at that time, were responsible.”

Since Tuesday, this quote has been making rounds on social media; the video clip of this has been running everywhere, but the buildup to the statement has been largely overlooked.

That journalist and the others who demanded the naming of who is to blame got what they wanted, but in doing so, said the quiet part out loud.

The entire episode of Bangladesh refusing to go to India under security concerns after pacer Mustafizur Rahman was removed from the Indian Premier League (IPL) by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), seemingly under pressure from religious and right-wing groups, is still quite fresh in the minds of the countrymen.

Arguments, both for and against the government’s stance of not sending the team to India after the ICC rejected their plea to shift their matches to Sri Lanka, have been played out at length.

Asif Nazrul was part of the interim government at the time, which ceased to exist on February 12.

Barring one instance of him claiming the players had decided not to go – a statement he retracted on the same day on social media, claiming a miscommunication – he has always accepted the responsibility for the decision.

On Tuesday too, he responded to the report by accepting his role and claiming he had made the right call.

"The decision not to send Bangladesh to play in the T20 World Cup in India was essentially mine, taken in my capacity as Sports Minister at the time,” he wrote on Facebook.

“I have said this publicly on multiple occasions. So I was somewhat puzzled when the Sports Ministry decided, after all this time, to investigate the matter and make it public.

"I believe we made the right decision. Being a small country does not mean others are entitled to disrespect us as they please, and it does not mean we should always accept such treatment in silence. I believe in friendship with India on the basis of equal dignity. Not in bowing our heads and accepting whatever we are given," he wrote.

Overall, the NSC choosing to investigate an issue that was already laid to rest, its committee failing to unearth any relevant new evidence after a months-long investigation, and releasing a report without holding anyone explicitly accountable, even though the ‘primary accused’ has long since accepted the responsibility for it – was an exercise in futility that the country’s sports could’ve done without.