The ICL will start from October 10, 2008 and a total of 34 matches will be played in four venues. There were speculations of many Bangla players joining ICL. Things became clearer when as many as 7 players who all have signed current contract with BCB, put up their resignation letter from the national side. Further Cricket360 learnt that, a Bangladeshi team namely, ‘Dhaka Warriors’ will be fielded in the forthcoming ICL, consisting of Bangladeshi players. Another 6 players too joined ICL later to make things more disastrous.
Habibul Bashar, former captain of Bangladesh team, will lead the ‘Dhaka Warriors’ in the ICL. Except him all other players are youngsters with good career statistics and even with test centuries and ODI centuries to their credit. Cricket360 could find out the reason behind this tie up with ICL. Money does matter. These players are expected to get not less than $ 20,000 by their contract with ICL. Many of the Bangladeshi players are unhappy with their central contract.
ICL is not approved by ICC and those who join ICL will automatically attract ban from International Cricket from their respective boards. The same thing happened with the 7 contracted players of BCB. The left out members are all retired from the national squad. The resignation letters from these players were rejected by BCB Cricket Operation Committee Chairman Ghazi Ashraf. On Wednesday, all the 7 contracted players namely, Bhashar, Aftab Ahmed, Alok Kapali, Shehariyar Nafeez, Farhad Raza, Dhiman Ghosh and Musharaf Hussain were banned from both International and domestic cricket for 10 years by BCB.
Bangladesh cricket team is already struggling to maintain their test status. They could win only one test out of 53 they had played since their test debut in 2000. Out of the 13 players joined ICL, except one or two, all have represented the Bangladesh team in both tests and ODIs. Cricket360 observes that, the future of Bangladesh cricket is in crisis after they lost these players. Apart from it these ICL episode also created anger among the fans who consider it as betrayal.
