Bangladesh Cricket Board on Sunday unveiled the new calendar for domestic season starting with the Dhaka Metro Under-18 Academy Tournament on October 1.
The different standing committees of he BCB will organise as many as 29 competitions during the long season with the development committee hosting highest 12 tournaments including the all-important school cricket tournament, which has over thousand matches.
The season was supposed to begin with the National Cricket League, the country’s lone first-class cricket competition, but persistent rain made the grounds unplayable forcing the organisers to defer it by five days.
The NCL, originally scheduled to kick off on September 29, will now begin on October 4. Dhaka Premier League, the showpiece event of the season, will start on December 2.
Gazi Ashraf Hossain, chairman of the BCB’s tournament committee, told New Age that they have made some adjustments to the calendar and changed the name of franchise-based Twenty20 competition, which was launched last year.
The tournament, which will be held after the World Cup in February-march next year, has been renamed BCB Twenty20 Tournament. Ashraf said it will still be a franchise-based competition, but unlike last year they will go for long-term deals with the franchises from now on.
The development committee launched two new tournaments called Metro Under-14 Academy Tournament and Metro Under-16 Academy Tournament, which will open the door for the Dhaka-based cricket coaching centres to bring their students to mainstream cricket.
‘We will divide the city into eight zones and pick the best players from the academies for a zonal competition. After that eight zonal teams will play against each other and the best players will be included in our coaching system,’ said Nazmul Abedin Fahim, a development committee official.
