The Bangladesh Cricket Board decided to start the Dhaka Premier League 2012-13 from August 29 putting an end to the month-long crisis that had almost halted this year’s competition.
The decision came at a marathon ad hoc committee meeting at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium where several other issues were also discussed with BCB president Nazmul Hasan in the chair.
Country’s top-class domestic competition that had received the List A status recently was going through a lot of twists and turns with the BCB deferring the date of players recruitment programme and commencement of the league earlier.
‘The players recruitment programme will be held on July 29 with the league starting from August 29,’ Jalal Yunus, chairman of BCB’s media and communication committee, told reporters at Mirpur.
‘The decision to start the league at the end of August was taken considering the busy schedule of the Bangladesh A, Under-23 and Under-19 teams,’ said Jalal.
‘A good number of cricketers will be unavailable in the first few weeks of August because the matches,’ Jalal added.
In another significant development, the BCB decided to send a letter to the National Sports Council asking them to start the process for an election, which is long overdue.
The BCB is currently being run by an ad hoc committee, which took over the charge on November 27 last year with a mandate of completing the election within 90 days. However, they failed to fulfil the obligation as it is yet to be decided under which constitution the election will be held.
A constitution, approved by the NSC with many controversial clauses, was challenged in the High Court, which gave the verdict in favour of the petitioner. However, the BCB and the NSC filed an appeal against the High Court order and got a stay order from the Appellate Division.
With this status quo, the election was uncertain but the BCB finally decided to move on, though it is still unclear which constitution will be followed.
‘The BCB election date will be announced within the next 30 days,’ said a BCB statement, without elaborating.
‘We will give a letter to NSC soon asking it to announce an election date, but it has not been discussed which constitution will be followed,’ said BCB spokesman Jalal.
The election has already become a hot topic in the cricketing corridor with the former BCB president Saber Hossain securing a nod from the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, for contesting the election.
Sources confirmed Saber met Hasina on Tuesday and held a discussion for over an hour and convinced her that no one should get a bye in the coveted election.
Saber also confirmed his interest in participating in the election when contacted by New Age.
-With New Age input
