Players By Choice to be televised live on Channel 9

The ‘Players by Choice’ for the third season of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) Twenty20 will be held at the Grand Ball Room of the Radisson Blu Water Garden Hotel in Dhaka on Thursday, October 22. The programme is expected to commence on 10 am in the morning.

It has been learnt that the entire programme will be televised live from the venue on Channel 9, the official broadcaster of the tournament. Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has confirmed the news on Tuesday through a press release on their official website. It has also been learnt that though the programme is a closed door event, special arrangements will be made at the venue for members of the media to follow the proceedings as they happen.

It should be noted that the BPL governing council brought forward the players’ draft programme from October 26 to 22 at the request of the franchises. But the programme was primarily announced to be held on October 31.

It has been confirmed by the BPL governing council that along with the local and foreign players, the six icon players of the Twenty20 tournament – Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Nasir Hossain and Mahmudullah Riyad – will also be disbursed by lottery on the same day.

Despite it earlier being announced that all the icon players will be allocated by mutual consent, the most of the franchisees showed their desperate interest to rope in Shakib Al Hasan and did not agree to compromise by any means. In that aspect, the organizers eventually decided to settle the fate of the icon players by lottery before the allocation of the other players.