BPL third edition on the cards?

Chairman of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) governing council Afzalur Rahman Sinha has revealed that Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is considering to hold the third edition of BPL ahead of the next ICC World Cup-2015 scheduled to be held in Australia-New Zealand.

The money-spinning domestic Twenty20 tournament hit a stumbling block since its 2nd edition in January-February 2013. Irregularities in players’ payment, mismanagement, match fixing allegations and a subsequent but prolonged investigation followed by trials are the reasons why the tournament has failed to see light even though it has been 18 months since BPL 2 ended.

“We are hopeful to hold BPL 3,” said BPL GC chief Sinha after coming out from a BPL GC meeting at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium yesterday.

“We want to organise the tournament between December 2014 and January 2015, ahead of the next ICC World Cup-2015,” Sinha added further.

This is the first time since the second BPL that BPL GC seems to have taken a strong move of organizing the next edition of the tournament and taking the aftermath of the unwanted events following the end of BPL 2 into consideration, this move is certainly worthy of giving rise to questions. It was learned upon query that BCB is looking to avoid legal issues understandably. According to the contract between BCB and the seven BPL franchises, the board is responsible to organize the tournament every year and failing to do so will give the franchises an opportunity to take legal action, and ask for monetary compensation. However, as eight months of  the year 2014 is already past, the BPL GC aims to start the tournament before the December 31 deadline while keeping a close eye on the Tigers’ Future Tours Programme (FTP) commitments in mind.

Bangladesh are scheduled to host Zimbabwe in a Test and ODI series in early November while Pakistan are supposed to tour Bangladesh in January 2015 according to the FTP of International Cricket Council (ICC).

“Considering the gap in the FTP, we have provisionally fixed a slot and taken decision to hold the next BPL. We’ve tentatively decided to hold BPL-3 towards the end of the current year,” said Sinha.

“We’ve held a meeting where we’ve discussed many issues from the 1st and 2nd BPL and besides these, some decisions regarding BPL 3 have also been taken.”

However, Sinha, also an influential board director of BCB, refused to give any further details, “But we cannot reveal any more about it at the moment. We will first place our decisions in the next board meeting and once approved, we will disclose all about most of the issues.”

Dhaka Tribune learned from sources withing BCB that the BPL GC plans to bring a major change in the format of the money spinning Twenty20 tournament which includes replacing the franchisees, revising the players’ fee structure and reducing loopholes from the legal contracts.

The next BCB meeting is scheduled to take place on August 26 and this meeting has become all the more significant as alongside the final decision on BPL-3, a decision regarding the reconsideration of the ban slapped on all-rounder Shakib al Hasan is also supposed to be taken in that meeting.

The former national skipper was suspended from all forms of cricket for six months and will not be issued NOCs until December 31, 2015 due to his indiscipline. Shakib later appealed to the board to reduce the sanctions on his national and international sporting activities.