BPL 2019-20: BCB makes it mandatory for every team to have one 140 plus kph seamer and a leg-spinner

The seventh edition of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) will be organized by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) and is scheduled to start on December 06, 2019. The dates are yet to be finalised though, but the organizers are pretty confident that the T20 league will get underway on the dates decided earlier. 

The league has gone through a lot of changes in recent times. In September of this year, the BCB president Nazmul Hasan Papon announced certain changes in rules and regulations and that they’ll be running the next season due to some conflict of interest issues between BPL Governing council and the franchises.

In what comes as a rather unique rule, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has made it mandatory for each of the seven teams to have an overseas bowler who can consistently crank up pace in excess of 140 kph and a leg-spinner, who has to bowl four overs in each game, director Mahbubul Anam announced on Friday.

Mandatory rule from the BCB

As per a report in ESPNCricinfo, it is understood that the order about 140 kph pacer and leg spinner has come from the team-management of the national side, which according to Anam, is concerned about Bangladesh’s inability of producing the two kinds of bowlers when playing internationally.

“BCB wants this BPL to be about improving Bangladesh’s cricketers in T20s, so we want to make sure that our batsmen and bowlers get enough opportunities [against quicks and leg-spinners], something that was not possible when it was a franchise-based BPL,” Anam said.

Each team must also have an overseas coach, physiotherapist, and trainer, while local coaches can only work as assistants to the head coach, and the fact that each team will have to appoint a BCB director as the team director.

Khaled, however, did not provide any clarity on the potential salary of the domestic cricketers. He although said that they’ll try to match the salary that players receive in international T20s.

“The players shouldn’t be worried about money,” Anam said. “We are holding this tournament by keeping them in mind. Salary isn’t very important, but it will definitely be respectable”.  Anam said.

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