The next edition of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) is all set to kick off after the National Parliamentary Election.
BPL governing council secretary IH Mallick informed the development today after discussing with the security agencies of Bangladesh.
"The arrangement is the same in BPL as in an international series. So every security agency of the country is involved with BPL. We fixed the schedule after discussing with the agencies," Mallick told the reporters.
"We have already discussed in our board meeting that when we can start BPL. We have made a preliminary decision there that we will organize BPL immediately after the national elections. The national elections will be held in the first week of January as per the news report. In that case we will find a suitable date on or before 10th January to start BPL. We've to finish it within February because we have the Sri Lanka series immediately after the BPL."
The BPL secretary is keen to hold the players' draft in September this year in a bid to give the franchisees time to prepare the team properly.
"We will try to hold the players' draft in the third or last week of September so that every team gets enough time to prepare the team. We had already informed all potential franchisees that we will organize players draft in September and want to start the game in January," he said.
The next BPL will see the introduction of DRS from the very beginning. The DRS issue was at the center of all discussions in the previous two editions as it was used only in Qualifier and final matches.
Mallick said the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) have already struck a deal with a DRS company for the four years and so there will be no problem to bring those technologies from the outset of the tournament this year.
"Last time we couldn't use DRS in the group matches. It was only used during the qualifier and final matches. But this time neither the governing council nor the production company is dealing with DRS. The board directly struck a four years deal with the DRS company," Mallick informed.
Mallick said they are getting good responses from the franchisees regarding the financial terms and rules. He informed that already some companies have shown their interest to buy the teams.
"Some companies have shown their interest to buy a team in BPL. At this moment we have three or four companies who are desperate. So if anyone is unwilling to run the team, there is no problem. Apart from that we plan to increase the number of teams to eight, then we can pick one from those companies," Mallick remarked.
Source: BSS