|| CF Correspondent ||

The Bangladesh Cricket Board opted to give rest to most of the national cricketers, who participated in the recent Asia Cup, in the first round of 20th National Cricket League,

NCL, country’s traditional first-class tournament, is scheduled to begin in four different venues from Monday.

The decision of resting national cricketers from NCL is a complete U-turn from their earlier stance when the BCB stated that national players need to be available in the first-class tournament in order to be eligible for Test selection.

The announcement came after the debacle in the two-match Test series against West Indies though in the present context it is hardly possible for BCB to follow the guideline largely due to the injury of national cricketers.  

Along with injured Sakib al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal, 11 other cricketers–Mushfiqur Rahim, Mahmudullah, Mashrafee bin Murtaza, Mohammad Mithun, Mustafizur Rahman, Soumya Sarkar, Rubel Hossain, Imrul Kayes, Abu Hider, Liton Das and Mehedi Hasan – who played some part in the tournament, have been rested as they are carrying different injuries.

‘’Our team physio [Thihan Chandramohon] has advised them to take rest during this time as some of them are having different types of injury concerns. Though some of them looked apparently fine but according to the physio they also had muscle problem since the Asia Cup was played in very tough condition,’’ chief selector Minhajul Abedin told Cricfrenzy on Sunday.

‘’Apart from some senior players others are likely to play from the second round from October 8,’’ he said.