No new team in 2nd edition of BPL

Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) governing council is likely to drop the idea of including a new franchise in the coming season since they lacked logistic facilities to make it bigger for the time being. It was planned that 10 teams will be featured in the BPL in its six years as the governing council will add one or more teams in every year. In the second edition of the money-spinning tournament, which is scheduled to be slated from January, it was decided to include a franchise from Rangpur or Dhaka Metropolitan.
Six franchises - Dhaka Gladiators, Barisal Burners, Chittagong Kings, Duronto Rajshahi, Sylhet Royals and Khulna Royal Bengals - participated in the inaugural edition of the tournament held last February.

But the lack of infrastructure facilities and logistic support prevented the authority from adding any team for the time being. Even there is possibility to add no more franchises with the existing six teams.

“Initially we thought to induct another team with the six participating franchises but now we probably would have to drop the idea as we have the lack of enough grounds to make it a bigger tournament,” Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, the chairman of BPL governing council told The Independent on Saturday.

“Still we are not ready to make it bigger. If we add another team, the length of the tournament will be increased but we’ve no slot available at this moment,” he added.

The chairman said he would discuss with the matter with the franchises in their next meeting.

“We’ve the regular meetings with franchise in this month where we’ll discuss about those problems with them. We need more times to make it bigger and the problems of the availability of the ground should have to be solved first”

Lipu said that the franchises now got a clear idea of the unpaid amount of taxes and working with the NBR closely to pay all taxes as early as possible.

However still some franchises did not clear the amount they owed to BCB as the cricket apex body took the liability to pay all outstanding amounts of the foreign players.