Bangladesh Cricket Board president Faruque Ahmed said on Monday that they have found a new window for the Bangladesh Premier League to avoid clashes with other franchise-based leagues with a goal to get more quality foreign players.
He also termed the revenue they earned by ticket selling in the recently concluded BPL as one of their successes after taking charge of the BCB last August.
Faruque held a meeting with the former national captains of Bangladesh at the BCB office situated at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Monday, where the likes of Gazi Ashraf Hossain, Akram Khan, Minhajul Abedin, Habibul Bashar, Rajin Saleh, Shahriar Nafees, Mominul Haque, and Liton Das were present.
‘We held a meeting where I called upon the former captains,’ said Faruque in a video statement released by the BCB after the meeting.
‘They gave their opinion; some fantastic suggestions came from them. We will try to use those in the future after considering the ideas.
‘We’ve already started to plan on the next BPL. We found a window. Now various T20 tournaments are held in every country, so the BPL clashes with those. We’re working on how we could organise BPL in a different way so that we can get more quality overseas players,’ he added.
‘We talked about how BPL could be developed more, how the schedule could be updated,’ said one of the former captains, Rajin.
‘We talked about how we could utilise the NCL T20 by scheduling it. We discussed matters like how BPL could get better franchised, how it can be developed, and how the quality foreign players can come.’
Faruque, meanwhile, gave an update on the ticket sales in the recently concluded BPL.
‘We sold the tickets in an unbelievable and successful manner,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons behind this was we went 100 per cent digital, which is a very secure way that is followed in the World Cups.’
‘We sold tickets worth around Tk 12,25,000. If I can give you a comparison, the Bangladesh Cricket Board sold tickets worth around Tk 15 crore in the previous 10 seasons. Considering that, we almost achieved that in one season. We also sold the rights for ticket sales, which are worth Tk one crore per season,’ Faruque added.
The BCB boss mentioned this as one of his achievements. He said, ‘I committed many things after being elected in August. I think we can get good revenue in ticket sales here in the BCB, especially in a tournament like BPL.’
Faruque also said that the franchises would get a share from the revenue BCB earned through selling tickets.