BCB sets the BPL ball rolling

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has started their mission to stage the third edition of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) as they ran advertisement seeking expression of interest (EOI) from interested corporate houses or organisations to buy franchise ownership rights for a period of four years from 2015 to 2018.

The BPL governing council's member secretary IH Mallick, who is also a director of the BCB, said that they decided to go for a fresh tender process because the contracts with the previous franchise owners had been terminated.

The BCB is planning to organise the third edition of the trouble-hit Twenty20 competition with a new structure from the last week of November. Mallick also informed that the old franchise owners would only be able to stay in the tournament after clearing their dues.

The BCB will invite new franchises from the regional teams of Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet. As per the advertisement, the interested parties have until August 7 to submit their expression of interest.

"The contracts with the previous franchises stand terminated at this point of time. The board has floated the new tender to bring in new owners for each of the franchises. The old owners, whose contracts were terminated by the BCB, can bid only if the board takes any decision after they clear the dues and settle all legal complications," said BCB's chief executive officer Nizamuddin Chowdhury.

"We have decided to move to a new format so that we can avoid the problems we had faced in the first two editions. This time we will not designate any company to run the show, rather it will be the BCB itself who will sell everything and control everything," said Mallick.