BCB not ready to welcome IPL franchise in BPL 

Bangladesh Premier League governing council member secretary Ismail Haider Mallick said on Thursday that they are not inviting Indian Premier League franchises as they fear of losing their rights.

The 10th edition of BPL, which starts today with Durdanto Dhaka taking on the Comilla Victorians in the tournament opener, greatly lacked the big names of the T20 franchise-based tournaments.

“There is no reason out there of not coming [in BPL]. They had approached us several times; however, the decision of the board is that we want to run the tournament in our local style. We don’t want to do anything that might be a reason for losing our rights,’ said Mallick on Thursday in Mirpur.

Mallick added that whether they will go revenue sharing board will decide. 

“Whether we will go for revenue sharing is a matter for the BCB and the board gives us a guideline and we follow that in running the tournament. In the first year, we had a system of revenue sharing but it wasn’t effective for us as there were many irregularities, players were not getting paid,” he said.

“Even in the second BPL there were lots of issues with players’ payment and we had to go for arbitration and we had to solve them by sitting with the players and franchise. So our experience was not good in the first two years. If franchise fee was 15 crores then board wouldn’t have a problem with revenue sharing,” he said.

“To run the tournament sustainably we have to keep in mind the financial and economic condition we are in,” he added.