BPL 2019-20: Rangpur Riders threaten to leave the T20 extravaganza

Rangpur Riders, who was led by Mashrafe Mortaza last season, have threatened to end their tenure in the Bangladesh Premier League. The same is for the reason that the league governing council will be looking to churn out new agreements, having already completed the first circle of the tournament that continued for six editions. The issue is understood to be regarding Shakib Al Hasan.

Shakib was picked to play for the Riders after he made a shift from the Dhaka Dynamites. last year’s runners-up. It has been learned that the Dynamites have been unable to accept the fact that Shakib joined the Riders. The Riders won’t be able to keep the Jessore-born all-rounder if there’s an auction for the next edition. In that scenario, the Riders will have to go after the 32-year-old Shakib again.

Earlier, the BCB stated that it would be opting for renewal of the contracts with mutual understanding with the current franchises. Minutes after the announcement by the country’s cricket board, Riders chief executive Ishtiak Sadeque vented out his frustration and then threatened to pull out of the tournament if needed.

“We cannot play in this manner. It’s not important whether we will continue with BPL or not but it’s just not on when we spent 10 to 15 crores BDT every year and they [BPL governing council] keep coming up with different ideas every year. If necessary, we will not play because Bangladesh Cricket Board have a lot of teams and let them play with them,” Sadeque was quoted as saying in Cricbuzz.

Agreement between Shakib and Riders can’t be validated

In the meantime, Mahbub Anam, a BPL governing council member, was clear cut in saying that the agreement between Shakib and the Riders can’t be accepted as there is no agreement with any of the franchises.

“We cannot acknowledge the agreement [between Shakib and Riders] as we don’t have any agreement with any franchise at the moment because if you don’t have an agreement with us [BCB] there is no point validating it from our part. With the conclusion of the sixth edition of BPL, the first cycle of the tournament is now considered complete, which also marks the expiry of the tenure of the franchise agreements,” Anam mentioned.

There’s also a rule that if a franchise ends up having two or more local players from the A+ category then it will be able to retain only two. Mashrafe was the Riders’ A+ player last season and if Shakib ends up in their franchise, then it will be interesting to find out the Bangladesh ODI skipper’s fate in the popular T20I tournament.