BCB to restructure National Cricket League

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) said that they eyeing to restructure the National Cricket League, country's traditional first-class tournament, in order to bring competitiveness in the tournament.

According to BCB officials players who will fail to raise their fitness standard and cross the fitness test are likely to be ineligible to take part in the tournament. BCB decided to have three fitness camps in a year to assess the condition of their first-class players as 78 players are currently under the pay-structure of the board.

The first fitness camp will begin on September 8-15 and those who will fail to attend the required standard will have the chance to give a fitness test in the second fitness camp that is scheduled to start before the Bangladesh Cricket League, country's lone franchise-based first class tournament.

It was observed lot of players take the NCL as a place for rehabilitations for the injury that they sustained throughout the year and prepare them instead for the upcoming Dhaka Premier League. "We have a lot of paid players in first-class.

We discussed on criteria, system, and fitness of the players and this will start from first week of September. The target of this is to ensure the first-class cricketers match or is close to the fitness level of the national team cricketers.

 "We are involving the fitness trainers and physios for this. We saw many cricketers in the HP face injury. This happens especially when the cricketers come to the camp following a domestic season.

We have NCL [National Cricket League] starting from October first week so we will have around a month to get the first-class cricketers in shape. Hope we will be able to set a standard from this." To make the tournament more competitive BCB proposed to limit the first innings by 120 overs as it was observed that players as well as teams take a negative approach with the current system and opt to play safer cricket instead of attacking brand of cricket.

The lack of competitiveness and below-par standards of the domestic first class competition -- the National Cricket League (NCL) -- has been a common feature of Bangladesh cricket for many years.

In the 18 years since getting Test status, Bangladesh's improvement in the longest version of cricket has not matched their progress in limited-overs and that has consistently led to the issues plaguing domestic first class competitions to be highlighted.

Minhajul informed that the board was willing to raise the standards of the NCL, pressing the issue of quality selection in the upcoming edition of the four-day competition, which will feature eight teams and is scheduled to start in the first week of October.

"We are working to ensure that this tournament is competitive and that the cricketers are serious about competition. We have a coordination meeting two or three weeks before the tournament starts. We will place a standard of selection. If we want to establish ourselves in Test cricket then there is no way other than having a standard domestic first-class tournament. Everyone involved in this tournament needs to contribute.

I hope we will be able to start a good thing from the coming season of NCL," Minhajul told reporters at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday.