Tainted Mohammad Ashraful omitted from BCL draft

When Bangladesh were taking baby steps amongst the big daddies of cricket, a number of young talents came to the fore, one of them was Mohammad Ashraful. The right-handed batsman played some jaw-dropping knocks for his team, including the century against Australia in Cardiff, which helped the Tigers humble Ricky Ponting and Co. However, the last few years haven’t been fruitful for him.

The 34-year-old was earlier slapped with a suspension of eight years by a special anti-national corruption tribunal, set up by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), in July 2014 after he was found guilty in match and spot-fixing scandals in the 2013 edition of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), playing for Dhaka Gladiators. His ban was then reduced to five years by a two-member panel.

Another blow for Ashraful

He took part in anti-corruption education and training programme by the ICC owing to which he was reprieved as per reports in Cricbuzz. Recently, it has been learned that the Dhaka-born cricketer hasn’t been included in the newly-introduced players draft for the forthcoming edition of Bangladesh Cricket League (BCL), which is a franchise-based first-class tournament.

He was, however, allowed to take part in the National Cricket League (NCL), the country’s traditional first-class competition and Dhaka Premier League (NPL) for the last couple of years. Nevertheless, he could only score 253 runs in 10 innings during the NCL last season. In the tournament, he also went on to pick up 11 wickets, but it didn’t impress his franchise-based owners.

Ashraful is also set to take part in the upcoming edition of the BPL as he was picked up in this year’s draft, held on Sunday, October 28, by Chittagong Vikings. The tainted cricketer has an experience of 61 Tests, 177 ODIs and 23 T20Is in which he has scored 2737, 3468 and 450 runs respectively. He last donned the national colours in Bangladesh’s ODI against Zimbabwe in May 2013.

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