Salary increase unlikely for Tigers

A proposal to increase the national players' salaries in the central contracts is unlikely to be tabled at Wednesday's Bangladesh Cricket Board executive committee meeting.

According to sources, a meeting took place between the working and financial committees recently where the board decided not to increase salaries of the cricketers as there has not been a considerable increase in the BCB's revenue.

 It was also learned that the board has decided to decrease the number of players to be centrally contracted from the 16 players who were named in the central contracts list in 2017 in five categories.

The old contract expired in December last year and the players will receive their outstanding salaries as per the new structure. The BCB increased the salary up to 63 per cent last year after players made their demands, saying that even lower-ranked teams earned more than them. The match fees were also doubled in ODIs from Tk 1 lakh to Tk 2 lakh, while the fees for Tests and T20Is were also nearly doubled.

"We are yet to finalise the proposal for the central contracts and most probably we will do that by tomorrow [Tuesday]. But it's confirmed that we are going to decrease the number of players in the central contract as we had to discuss quite a few matters as well," Akram Khan, chairman of the BCB's cricket operations committee, told reporters yesterday.

Among the 16 cricketers from the central contract, Sabbir Rahman has already been ruled out of the new contract after being handed a six-month ban from domestic cricket and was also scraped from the central contracts on the first day of 2018 by board president Nazmul Hassan after the cricketer allegedly assaulted a young fan during a National Cricket League game last year.

According to sources, pacers Taskin Ahmed from category C and Kamrul Islam Rabbi from category D are likely to be excluded from the new central contracts because of poor performance, which means the number of centrally contracted players are likely to come down to 13.

Meanwhile, Mahmudullah Riyad who is the only player in category A, is all set to be promoted to category A-plus alongside Mushfiqur Rahim, Tamim Iqbal, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Shakib Al Hasan.

Pacer Mustafizur Rahman, who was in category C, is also set to get a promotion in the central contract.