DHAKA —The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) ruled out any possibility of hosting the popular event Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) due to the situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The cash-rich tournament was scheduled to be held in November-December this year but with the Covid-19 still causing mayhem around the world, there is no way to organize BPL, said BCB president Nazmul Hassan Papon.
“To organize BPL, we have to bring up foreign players here, which is not possible in this situation,” Papon said here yesterday
“At the same time, we need to ensure a better production system, which is not possible also in the aspect of Covid-19. If we can manage these somehow, there will be no problem to host BPL, but the things are bigger here. So we have no BPL in our sight at least in this year,” he added.
The BCB had already brought back cricket to the ground with BCB President’s Cup, a three-team 50-over tournament. To organize the tournament, they created a biosecure bubble for the players of the three teams.
According to Papon, a bio-secure environment is not possible to create in BPL since the franchisees deal with many other problems to run a team.
“In the aspect of Covid-19 I don’t think hosting an event like BPL will be easy for us in Bangladesh. Most of the franchisees here tackle many problems to run a BPL team of BPL. And the biosecure bubble which has been put in place in England and UAE (for IPL) is not possible in Bangladesh,” he remarked.
He went on to say: “In the context of our country, I think it’s not possible for our franchisees to spend that much money to secure a high-quality biosecure bubble for the teams.”
There is one way to host BPL outside of the country in UAE like IPL but BPL Governing Council secretary I H Mollick it is not a practical solution for the context of Bangladesh.
“It is not any practical solution in the context of our country. Our franchisees are not that much financially wealthy to run a team, going outside of the country like UAE,” Mollick said.BSS
