BCB plans more longer-version
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) are looking forward to make domestic competitions more meaningful and they are all set to bring changes in the calendar.
The country's governing body for cricket have prepared a draft calendar for the upcoming season, which will start with a Premier Division under-18 tournament in September.
The most significant changes being brought into the Premier Cricket League, which is the country's most coveted domestic one-day competition, would be the two-day tournament. But on top of everything, the main question is whether it would be possible to maintain this calendar.
"The calendar is yet to be approved and definitely there would be a lot more discussions and the board members would also give their opinion before it is approved. I think it's not an impossible task to maintain a calendar if everybody is sincere about it," said Gazi Ashraf Hossain, chairman of the cricket operations committee and vice-chairman of the tournament committee.
"The clubs may raise questions about the timing of the Premier League as they played last May but I think everybody must think about the greater interest of the game," said the former CCDM (Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis) chairman.
According to the the draft calendar, the Premier League will kick off in the last week of December this year with its Twenty20 version and the inter-club players transfer is scheduled for December 12-14.
The premier division's two-dayers, the re-introduced format with each 90 overs being played on each day, will start from January 10 next year and will be completed on March 25.
After completion of the two-dayers, the top six teams will take part in the four-dayers that are scheduled for March 27 to April 30 next year and the board are planning to appeal to the International Cricket Council (ICC) for first-class recognition of the competition.
Ashraf explained the reasons behind the re-introduction of the longer-version format in the Premier League by saying that players desperately need to improve their temperament and ball selection to survive at the international level.
"Everybody knows where our problem lies in the international circuit. Our batsmen struggle at the highest level because of temperament and ball selection and I think the two-day league could be a good solution for us. Not only the batsmen but our pace bowling will also improve by this format," observed the former national skipper.
"And this competition ensures the maximum participation of our national cricketers, so this change definitely would be helpful for our cricket. There are many technical things which we can improve," he added.
It was learnt that the CCDM got positive response regarding the changes of the format of the Premier League.
The National Cricket League (NCL) will start from October 8 with six divisions playing the country's lone first-class competition.
"We are thinking to introduce longer-version cricket in the Premier League in spite of having four-day competitions in NCL because we will be benefited as we play the longer-version cricket," said Ashraf.
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