Mahmudullah puts Bangladesh national anthem controversy to bed

Mahmudullah is one of the most important members of the Bangladesh side. In fact, such is his importance in the team that he is the next in line to captain the side should something that reinforces his importance in the side, so to speak. However, when they played Afghanistan in the first T20I of the three-match series, controversy came to bite Mahmudullah. As it had done to Parvez Rasool when he acrimoniously chewed gum when the Indian national anthem played.

The Bangladeshis would go on to concede defeat to the Afghans in the first match of the series with Rashid Khan proving to be the destructor-in-chief along with newcomer Mujeeb. However, as the match came to a close, Mahmudullah came out and explained what exactly had happened when the national anthem was playing.

In his social media account, Mahmudullah Riyad said, “Some of the spectators who watched the first T20 match in the television might gain some wrong perception. The disputation raised because of witnessing confusing expression in the face of some of the cricketers while the national anthem was played.

A problem with the audibility

While Riyad failed to hear a majority of the anthem, even Tamim Iqbal took to Twitter to explain what had gone wrong in the sound system in Dehradun.

“But what happened practically was that, for some unknown reasons, the national anthem of Bangladesh could not be heard properly from the field although the national anthem of Afghanistan was clearly audible. We, Bangladeshi players, were actually waiting for the national anthem to be played when it already started but we could not hear that from the field. Television audiences, at that very time, heard the anthem which did not reach up to our ear.”