BCB announces full schedule of Bangabandhu T20 Cup Cricket
The five-team Bangabandhu T20 Cup Cricket will begin on 24 November at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur, Dhaka, reports news agency UNB.
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on Saturday announced the full itinerary of the T20 Cup, named after Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the occasion of the Mujib Borsho.
Two matches will be played every day at 1:30pm and 6:30pm respectively, but Friday’s matches will be at 2:00pm and 7:00pm respectively.
Beximco Dhaka will play Minister Group Rajshahi in the opening match on Wednesday at 1:30pm while Fortune Barisal will meet Gemcon Khulna at 6:30pm in the other fixture on the opening day.
Every team will meet each other twice in the league basis matches.
Later, four top teams will qualify for the title deciding next round like the franchise-based T20 tournament, Bangladesh Premier League. The round will begin on 14 December.
The day’s first match will be Eliminator while the day’s second match will be Qualifier. The winners of the eliminator will play the losers of the qualifiers on 15 December.
Later, the winners of the 15 December match will play the final on 18 December against the winners of qualifiers.
Meanwhile, the players’ draft of T20 Cup took place in a city hotel on Thursday.
In the draft, Gemcon Khulna roped in two players from Grade A -- Shakib Al Hasan and Mahmudullah Riyad.
Mushfiqur Rahim was the first cricketer to have been roped in by Beximco Dhaka. It was expected that the team who gets the first chance to call will secure the service of Shakib Al Hasan. But the management of Beximco Dhaka went for Mushfiqur.
The other players from Grade A -- Mustafizur Rahman and Tamim Iqbal -- will play for Gazi Group Chattogram and Fortune Barishal respectively. Minister Group Rajshahi opted to not call any player from Grade A.
Before the draft, a total of 113 cricketers, who are out of the national team, High Performance unit or U-19 setup, participated in a fitness test. Who scored at least 11 points in the test got the chance to be named in the draft.
This league is BCB’s second big step to come out from the COVID-19 situation to resume cricketing activities in the country.
Earlier, they organised a 50-over competition comprising three teams. This time, a total of five teams will participate in this league, and a total of 80 players have found their teams among 157 cricketers who were placed in the draft.