2nd 4-day league set for Dec 24

The inaugural edition of the franchise-based four-day tournament, the second longer-version competition in the country after the National Cricket League (NCL), is likely to start from December 24.
Four franchises will represent four zones in the competition and three companies have already bought the rights of the three franchises, while the fourth one will be run by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) if ultimately no one comes forward to buy it.
“We will not wait to sell the fourth one, instead the board has decided to start the league from December 24 and BCB will run the fourth franchise if it is ultimately not bought by a company,” informed BCB's ad-hoc committee member and media committee chairman Jalal Yunus yesterday.
The tournament will be played on a single-leagues basis, and the matches will be staged in two venues – probably at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur and the Sheikh Abu Naser Stadium in Khulna. “The Sylhet venue is also under consideration but Dhaka and Khulna are the more preferable venues,” added Yunus.
The national selectors would provide a pool of 80 players who will be selected for the four-franchise first-class tournament based on their performances in the NCL. The board has as yet not decided on a date regarding the auctioning of these players.
The BCB is planning to finish the tournament within 18 days, before the Tigers' proposed tour of Pakistan in January next year.
“We fixed a tentative dates of January 12 and January 13 for one ODI and one T20I in Pakistan, so we have to complete the second four-day tournament by that time and you know the BPL is also going to kick off from the January 17,” said Yunus.
The four-day tournament, which will be a new addition to the domestic calendar, will see the national players back in action following their impressive performance against the West Indies where they won the five-match ODI-series 3-2.