The Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) governing council took star allrounder Shakib Al Hasan scathing criticism on the tournament with positive note as they felt that it came as good for publicity for the country's premier T20 event, reports BSS.
Shakib criticized the organization two days before the start of BPL, saying that BCB's reluctance, lack of planning resulted in making the tournament a commercial failure.
The ace allrounder saw it as an organizational failure of BCB. He did not stop only criticizing but also said that the tournament has been in tatters since its inception and that he would change the whole BPL if he is made the CEO.
After this criticism, the discussion has been doing the rounds in the cricket fraternity. But when the BPL had progressed at a snail's pace, Shakib's criticism seemed like negative publicity to BCB. Whatever the discussion, BCB accepted it with open arms. Shakib has also been welcomed as CEO by BPL governing council, the organizer of the tournament.
"First of all, I would like to thank Shakib. Most welcome if he wants to be the CEO of BPL. He is expressing his interest on his own and we have no reservation," BPL Governing Council Chairman Sheikh Sohail said on Friday.
In response to another question, he added, "Now he is playing, so he will be considered as player. And he cannot come here as a player. Let him come next year."
Shakib criticized BCB and said, "If I am made the CEO of BPL, it won't take me long to correct the things. I think it will take one to two months to fix everything. There will be a new draft, BPL will be in free time. There will be modern technology. The broadcast will be fine. There will be home and away venues."
Shakib also said since cricket has been huge popular game here in Bangladesh and even the people from remote areas regularly want to take the update of cricket, it is not tougher to make BPL a commercial success.
In response to Shakib's criticism, BPL secretary and BCB director IH Mallick said that the market reality is not what the star allrounder thinks.
"Our market is not bigger like India or other countries. We can't take huge amount for franchise fees from the franchise like the IPL or PSL. We had to deal with economic crisis and various factors. Still the country's economic crisis is going on, and so it's not possible to make it bigger like IPL," he said.
"And it is not possible to run the BPL as home and away basis because in most of the city like Comilla, Rangpur, we have no airport and hotel facilities. But still we will consider Khulna as other venue as soon as it is renovated."
Shakib also said, "The quality of Dhaka Premier League (DPL) is much better than BPL. At least the organizers know what to do and when."
Mallick responded, saying: "I see that Shakib misses many DPL matches. But he never misses BPL. If I question him, he has not played many games in DPL and so how he can he say that BPL is worse than DPL."
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
