As South African bowler Wayne Parnell was preparing to leave the team hotel in Dhaka for the first T20 match against Bangladesh at Shere Bangla stadium, he received a call in his hotel room from an anonymous person, which was reported to be of a threatening nature.
As soon as the Bangladesh Cricket Board's security consultant Hossain Imam came to know about the call, he immediately informed the intelligence agencies, who tried to trace the call and the caller's location.
But Imam felt that the hotel the players were staying in did not follow the guidelines, which clearly states that strangers cannot be allowed to get in touch with the players in any way.
"We had clearly told the hotel not to transfer phone calls directly to any player's room. We told them to first take the player's permission first. But in Parnell's case, the hotel didn't abide by our guideline," Imam told Kaler Kantho.
South Africa's team manager Mohammed Moosajee also may not have taken the case very seriously, but he could not understand as to how such calls can be made to the players' rooms.
With bookies in the past having contacted cricketers over the phone, such anonymous callers should not be allowed to talk to cricketers.
"Our main concern was the hotel putting anonymous callers through to the players' rooms. Wayne followed the necessary security protocol by informing our security officer, who then took it up with the BCB officials. He (Wayne) didn't feel threatened at all, he was more concerned about anonymous phone calls being put through to his room," said Moosajee.
Such calls did not seem to have any impact on his performance in the first T20 match as Wayne Parnell came up with a decent performance taking one wicket for 12 runs. South Africa defeated Bangladesh by 52 runs.
The second T20 game in the series will be played on Tuesday.
