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The Bangladesh Premier League, the tournament that was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of Bangladeshi cricket, will not happen this year. And the man who made the decision did not sugarcoat the reason.
“The BPL is not happening this year,” Tamim Iqbal, the BCB president, said flatly on Thursday. “We are working on a formula.”
It was, in its own way, an admission that has been a long time coming. The BPL has been bleeding money, mired in controversy, and run, at times, with a looseness that would embarrass a well-organised village tournament. Tamim, to his credit, has looked at the mess and decided that the only way forward is to stop, rebuild, and start again properly.
The losses tell part of the story. The BCB has incurred deficits of roughly 40 crore taka over the past two editions of the league, a figure that translates to a little over three million dollars. For a board that is supposed to be profiting from its flagship competition, that is not a wobble. It is a structural failure.
The rot beneath the surface
The financial losses are only the visible symptom. Beneath them lie the deeper problems that have plagued the BPL for years, and which Tamim has now been forced to confront head on.
There are the franchises that failed to comply with their financial obligations, leaving players unpaid and bank guarantees unfulfilled. There are the allegations of match-fixing and corruption that have periodically surfaced, including the suspension of a player and several officials over betting-related violations after an anti-corruption investigation. There was the boycott by players over remarks made by a BCB official, a chaotic episode that forced fixtures to be rearranged at short notice.
Taken together, it is a picture of a tournament that has never quite managed to get out of its own way. The BPL, which began in 2012, has always struggled to match the commercial muscle of the Indian Premier League and other franchise competitions. But the recent years have felt less like a struggle and more like a slow unraveling.
Tamim’s honest reckoning
What is striking about Tamim’s announcement is the bluntness of it. There was no attempt to spin the decision, no talk of “pausing” or “reviewing” the tournament. The BPL is not happening, and the reason is that it has been losing money and failing on the governance front.
“Franchise cricket is supposed to make money for the Bangladesh Cricket Board, not lose money,” Tamim said. “So something is going wrong. Until and unless we fix the issues, it is not absolutely important for us to host this event every year.”
The logic is hard to argue with. A board that loses money on its flagship product every year is a board that is doing something fundamentally wrong. Tamim’s refusal to keep repeating the same mistake, simply because the calendar says the tournament is due, is a rare example of long-term thinking in an administration that has too often been defined by short-term expediency.
The promise of a better return
Tamim has been careful to insist that the BPL is not being abandoned, merely paused and rebuilt. “We are 100 per cent committed to doing this. But I don’t want to rush. I want to do everything properly. Even if it takes six or 12 months, I am willing to take that time,” he said.
The plan, as he outlined it, involves restructuring the franchise model, resolving the outstanding payments and bank guarantee issues, and completing the franchise selection process well in advance of the next edition. The goal is to bring the BPL back as a tournament the board can actually stand behind, one that makes money rather than losing it.
Tamim also left the door open to foreign investment, suggesting the board is willing to welcome overseas owners and investors into the league structure. It is a sensible idea, and one that could finally give the BPL the commercial foundation it has always lacked.
The cost of the pause
None of this is to say the cancellation is painless. It is not, and Tamim acknowledged as much, noting that players would be “disheartened” by the decision.
For the players, the BPL represents a significant source of income, and its absence will be felt. For the fans, the tournament has been, for all its flaws, a highlight of the domestic calendar, a chance to see local and overseas stars in action. Its cancellation leaves a hole in the season that will not be easy to fill.
There is also the broader question of what the pause says about Bangladeshi cricket’s commercial maturity. A country with a genuine passion for the sport, and a huge, engaged audience, ought to be able to sustain a profitable T20 league. That it has so far failed to do so is a reflection of the governance problems that Tamim is now, belatedly, trying to fix.
The bigger picture
There is a certain irony in the timing of this announcement. Bangladeshi cricket is riding high on the back of the historic Test win over Australia in Darwin, a result that has transformed the way the world talks about the Tigers. And yet, at the very moment the national team is scaling new heights, the domestic franchise league is being cancelled because it cannot be run properly.
The contrast is instructive. The success of the Test team has been built on years of careful, patient progress, the slow accumulation of talent and belief. The BPL, by contrast, has been run with a haste and a carelessness that has finally caught up with it.
Tamim’s decision to pause and rebuild is, in a sense, an attempt to apply the lessons of the national team’s success to the domestic game. Do it properly, or don’t do it at all. It is a philosophy that should have guided the BPL from the start.
What happens now
The immediate future is one of work rather than spectacle. The BCB will spend the coming months resolving the outstanding financial issues, restructuring the franchise model, and preparing for a tournament that, when it returns, will hopefully bear little resemblance to the one that has just been shelved.
Tamim has said it may take six months, or twelve, or even longer. He has made clear that he is in no hurry, that getting it right matters more than getting it done quickly. It is a refreshing change of tone, and it offers the promise of a BPL that finally lives up to its billing.
For now, the tournament is gone, and with it a reminder of everything that has gone wrong with Bangladeshi cricket’s commercial ambitions. The hope is that when it returns, it returns as something the board, the players and the fans can all be proud of.
