||Desk Report||

The Bangladesh Cricket League (BCL), the premier first class tournament of the country is all set to roll onto the ground on Wednesday (November 21) with two games—one of which is the game between South Zone and Central Zone, the two most successful teams in the tournament’s history. The game will take place at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium from 9:30 AM (local time).

Each of the four participating teams in the competition, had the opportunity to retain six players from previous year’s squad with a draft on November 17, a first instance in the tournament, to allow the teams to build the rest of their squads.

Although the draft system was in place to ensure a balanced squad for each side, South Zone appeared to have made the best use of the retention policy.

Current champions South Zone retained renowned stars like Tushar Imran, Anamul Haque, Shahriar Nafees, Nurul Hasan, and Abdur Razzak, ensuring a solid balance for both batting and bowling units in the first place.

In the draft, they picked the likes of Soumya Sarkar, Mohammad Mithun, Shafiul Islam, and Kamrul Islam Rabbi, who are not only great performers as far as the domestic games are concerned, but also capable of retaining the title for the side.

Central Zone, too, made a good batsman-pacer-spinner combination during the draft by retaining Shadman Islam, Taibur Rahman, Marshall Ayub, Shuvagoto Hom, Abu Hider Rony, and Mosharraf Hossain in the six allotted spots.

They also drafted players like Liton Das, Taskin Ahmed, Nazmul Hossain Shanto, and Mosaddek Hossain – a group that has been around the national team setup and certainly has a point to prove now.