BPL to brand Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Premier League's (BPL) main focus is to brand Bangladesh as an attractive cricketing nation, officials said at a press conference at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium yesterday.
The tournament will consist of six divisional teams which will participate on a franchise basis. The divisional teams will be franchised through an open auction which will take place at the Westin Dhaka on January 10. The minimum bidding amount of a franchise will be 1 million US dollars.
Each team will consist of 18 players out of with a maximum of nine foreign players, up to five of whom can play in a match. There will be six star players from Bangladesh representing each team as an Icon player.
During the auction, there will be three categories for foreign players with bidding for category A starting from 1,00,000 US dollars, for category B 50,000 US dollars and for category C 25,000 US dollars. The categorisation of Bangladeshi players and the final Bangladeshi player auction list will be decided on January 7 in the BPL Governing Council meeting.
The players' auction is set to be held at either the Radisson Water Garden or the Pan Pacific Shonargaon on January 19 from 11am onwards and the program will be telecast live worldwide through the Broadcasting Partner of the BPL, Channel-9. Overseas broadcasting partners have yet to be announced.
Recently, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Farveez Mahroof (Sri Lanka), Sohail Tanvir (Pakistan), and retired Proteas pacer Andre Nel have joined the growing list of foreign players to have announced themselves available for the tournament.
An opening ceremony is being planned for the first ever edition of the BPL T20 on February 9 at the Sher-e-Banagla National Stadium in Mirpur. A concert will be held at Cox's Bazar on January 13 which will unveil the theme song of the tournament in which local and foreign artists will also perform. While the artist of the song has been kept a secret the song has been said to be composed by Bappi Lahiri.
Tickets will be sold 10 days prior to the start of the tournament through bank outlets.
Yet to be launched, Channel 9 has the exclusive rights to broadcasting the matches of the BPL T20 for its first 6 editions at the cost of 24 Million US dollars.
Jalal Yunus, director of Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), BPL Governing Council secretary Sirajuddin Alamgir, director of Game On Sports Management Anjan Ganguly and BCB CEO Manzur Ahmed were present on the occasion.