Nazmul Hassan: T20s likely to kick-start Bangladesh domestic season soon
The BCB has given a green signal to restart domestic cricket for the first time in six months in Bangladesh. Board president Nazmul Hassan said on Monday they are considering an introductory tournament before completing the unfinished 2019-20 Dhaka Premier League (DPL) season and holding the rest of the 2020-21 domestic competitions.
The update came during the same press briefing in which Hassan announced the postponement of the Sri Lanka tour again. It effectively means that Bangladesh are unlikely to have any international cricket until the scheduled home series against West Indies in January 2021.
Usually, the domestic season in Bangladesh starts in October, which makes it likely that if not all, at least the top cricketers in the country will have competitive cricket soon.
Hassan said that the national cricketers would continue training for the next two weeks, which would be followed by three practice matches - two two-day games and a three-day match. By then, they would have formulated the initiating tournament, which is likely to be T20s.
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"Our Covid situation hasn't improved to the point that we can start everything normally. But we are going to start [domestic] cricket," Hassan said. "The national team will resume their training camp for the next 15 days and will play three practice matches.
"Soon afterwards, we will start domestic cricket. We have two plans in front of us immediately: we can [either] have a six-team tournament to involve up to 90 players, or, we can make three or four teams from the national team, the HP [High Performance] team and the Under-19 teams, and then have a BCB-sponsored T20 tournament among them."
Once the players get used to competitive cricket, the truncated leagues from last season will resume - but with proper pandemic guidelines in place so that the BCB can ensure the health and safety of players.
"We will resume the [incomplete Dhaka Premier] league once I have the proposal about running the leagues by keeping the players safe," Hassan said. "It is very important for us. The clubs and players must sit together and give us a plan, and then we will give them a guideline."
Hassan said that he would personally like to see the 2019-20 and 2020-21 DPLs held in the same season, although it has never been done before.
"We will try to resume the postponed league and then hold next season's league as well. I personally want to hold both leagues this season, but it is difficult to predict anything [with regards to the Covid-19 situation]," he said.