The upcoming edition of Dhaka Premier League (DPL), the traditional Dhaka-club based 50-over tournament, will return to its old format, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has announced.
Earlier, the 2019-20 season of the DPL was postponed on March, last year after just one completed round of matches due to Covid-19 outbreak in Bangladesh following which the BCB scrapped the edition and re-launched it in T20 format.
The move to switch format was also done with an eye to prepare for the upcoming T20 World Cup, scheduled in the UAE and Oman in October.
”Certainly (DPL will be played in 50-over format). Last year what happened is that we had very little time and in a day we played three to four games which is not usual. DPL is our main List A tournament and there is tradition involved with it, so naturally the next edition of DPL will be played in 50-over format,” Kazi Inam Ahmed, chairman of Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis, a BCB wing entrusted with the duty of completing the tournament, told reporters.
”We are thinking about arranging DPL in March-April next year,” he added.
Inam further informed that the board is aiming to begin the lower tier Dhaka-club based tournaments from November as there was no first, second or third division cricket in the country after the Covid outbreak.
”The first division, second division, and the third division leagues (that was postponed following the corona outbreak) are important for us. We have talked with all the coordinators as we want to start those leagues from November-December, this year,” said Inam.
”We’ve decided to call all the clubs (lower tier) in the coming week to fix the dates of respective competition. ‘Look there is no lockdown and everything is starting to open up like school and colleges but still there is a health protocol guideline of the government. In the lower tier leagues we will see what kind of health protocol and if there is any instruction by the government in this regard,” he concluded.
Since its inauguration in 1974–75 the league has been the premier club cricket competition in Bangladesh. It gained List A status starting with the 2013–14 tournament, thus superseding the National Cricket League One-Day as Bangladesh’s main List A competition.
In the years from 1974–75 to 2011–12, Abahani Limited won the championship 17 times. Other winners were Mohammedan Sporting Club nine times, Biman Bangladesh Airlines five times, Victoria Sporting Club four times, Old DOHS Sports Club twice and Brothers Union once. There was no tournament in 2012–13.
To commemorate the centenary of the birth of the founding father of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the 2019–20 season of the league was named “Bangabandhu Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League 2019-20”.