The 19th National Cricket League is set to get underway on September 15 with an increase of match fees and other allowances for the players.
The matches will be played on home-and-away basis and will be held at five different venues across the country — Sylhet, Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi.Bangladesh Cricket Board’s cricket operations chairman Akram Khan revealed the information during a press conference at Sher-e Bangla National Stadium on Monday.
The league will be played in two Tiers — Tier-1 and Tier-2 — and there will be no matches in Dhaka this year.
The players’ match fees have been increased to Tk 35,000 from Tk 25,000 while their travel cost and daily allowances were increased to Tk 2,500 and Tk 1,500 from last year’s Tk 2,000 and Tk 1,000 respectively.
The selectors of the Bangladesh Cricket Board would choose the squads of the divisional teams as they did in the past from a pool of 20-25 players, said Akram.
‘The selectors are working in the same process that they followed in the previous year. The divisional authorities gave a list of 20-25 players and the selectors would choose 15-member squad from the list,’ said Akram on Monday.
The former national team skipper said that they have already informed the curators to make sporting wickets at all the venues.
Bangladesh national team opener Tamim Iqbal criticised the BCB officials for preparing different wickets in domestic and international matches after the third day of the first Test in Mirpur against Australia.
‘We have already briefed the curators before the start of Australia series what kind of wickets we are looking for. We will try to make sporting wickets so that the bowlers also get help from the surfaces,’ said Akram.
‘We have seriously thought and discussed on the facts and we also tried in the last 2-3 years. And because of that, we are not hosting any match in Dhaka this year.
‘There are a lot of matches – club cricket, international, BPL etc played in Dhaka. So, we have to give the pitches here some break and at the same time we also have to make sporting wickets. Keeping that in mind, we are arranging the matches outside of Dhaka,’ he added.
Akram also revealed his dissatisfaction regarding the two-tier system as the competition didn’t increase that much but mentioned that it was in much better shape than previous occasions and needed more time to improve.
‘The Tier-system is not fulfilling our expectations,’ Akram added.
‘This is a very important tournament to make a place in the national team and there are also a lot of opportunities as well. A batsman can bat for a long time in this longer version tournament. Bowlers can also bowl a lot in this kind of format.’
BCB introduced the much-criticised two-tier system, hoping to improve the competitiveness but it did not help the tournament much and rather reduced the number of matches.
-With New Age input
