BCL franchises raise concerns

The country's premier four-day cricket competition, the Bangladesh Cricket League (BCL), which is scheduled to begin from September 20, has suffered a setback as one of the franchises, Prime Bank South Zone, has informed the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) that it won't be able to take part in the league.

Prime Bank, which runs the South Zone team that includes the best players from Khulna and Barisal, has said that it hadn't allocated money in its annual budget to take part in this league twice in one year.

The last BCL took place in March this year.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Saiful Islam Bhuiyan, the assistant manager of the Prime Bank Cricket Club said: “We expressed our grievances to the BCB through a written letter sent to the BCB CEO on August 12.”

“One of the problems is that we did not allocate enough money to take part in this league twice. Also, when we had initially decided to take part in this competition in the first season, we were told that the best players would play in the league, but they have always been busy due to international commitments. It will be the same this time. Also, several other promises that were made to the franchises are not being kept. It's not receiving as much importance as we thought it would.

“This does not serve our purpose. People don't even remember who won the last BCL title. It's not getting enough publicity,” he added.

Uday Hakim, the operative director of Walton group which runs the Walton Central Zone echoed similar sentiments. While they haven't submitted anything in written, they did let the BCB know about their problems unofficially.

“We have the Afghanistan series and then we have the England series. The BCL will end up being overshadowed by these two series. As a company, we have obviously come here to get some mileage. We believe that we won't get that if the BCL takes place in between these two international competitions, so we requested the board to host it at a time when the national players are available,” Hakim told The Daily Star yesterday.

The national Test players are supposed to take part in the first two rounds of the upcoming BCL in order to get ready for the Test series against England.

When contacted BCB CEO Nizamuddin Chowdhury said: “We are talking to the franchisees. They have raised certain issues and we are looking into it.”

BCB director Akram Khan yesterday said that if the BCL does not take place, then the board will host the National Cricket League instead.