|| CF Correspondent ||

Khulna Titans head coach Mahela Jayewardene arrived in Dhaka on Thursday to have a work out on how Titans will go in the BPL’s player draft that is scheduled to hosted on October 28. The Sri Lankan spoke with reporters regarding his ambitions and plans.

Here are the excerpts..

How are planning out for the draft 

We have retained four players and directly signed two overseas already. So with that we then have to go into the draft and take other players or options that we have. At the draft we cannot plan much, but we can plan how we want to go about it. But it all depends on what number of calling you have to take players. Rules have changed this year with four overseas in the eleven. So when we retained we realized how important local players are, there is going to be seven in the eleven. So we retained three locals and hopefully we can sign some more good local players from the draft.

Winning BPL

The tournament is a challenge every year. Last year as well I thought we played really good cricket by finishing top of the table but just couldn’t get through the knockout stages. But that was one game and that’s very tough when someone like Gayle plays a knock like that. But I thought with the young team we had, the way we have invested, we were very good. So try and build on that this year we are looking at those young options. Guys like Shanto and Arif who are now being consistent in the Bangladesh setup, I just he (Arif) has just been picked for the Test squad which is great news for us. Mahmudullah is going to captain the Test team so the players that we kept as our core players are potential players, future wise. So planning wise we have been good and hopefully we can build on that in the draft and get a stronger squad and compete. That’s all we can guarantee that we will work really hard and compete at the BPL.

Expectation from BPL this year comparing to other leagues that you see

I think BP has come a long way and it has been consistant. Last BPL was very competitive and every year it has improved. It is always going to be better I guess depending on the players. We have seen lot of top players have signed up already or are in the draft. Only thing it has shifted from October to January. There are issues with availability of some players otherwise we could have more quality group of players to pick from. But unfortunately just this year those players are not available but the players we have we see lot of quality and we expect a good tournament.

Draft on 28 and tournament starts January. How do you look at risk of losing players to national calls or injury

It is going to be a challenge. Last year you had the option of signing any amount of overseas players by a franchise. There were lot of players who were bought and blocked so that other franchises can’t take even if there was an injury or if a player from the squad was unavailable. But in this year it is just the draft and you have a cap of eight overseas players and a lots of players will be left in the draft after that. So if someone is not available or injured during the gap period, then you can always go back and replace them from the draft. Or there might be some other players getting available during the period because some of the tournament might not happen and they might not be picked for the national teams. There is a bit of room to work with and we just have to go with that. Its unusual, the election is not going to happen every year. It’s a good challenge for the coaches to think forward and manage.

Working with a budget where in IPL you get to spend more

I think every franchise tournament is different. IPL is a different setup where you have an equal salary cap and you have an equal opportunity to get there pretty much the best players of the world are in there in the draft. BPL is different because you have to work with available players and not with all players. So we have to try to get the best from them and the budget is also different. Khulna budget is different to Dhaka, Chittagong, Comilla or Rangpur. We work on our limitations and we want to be the best still and compete. Like what we saw last year we managed to get some exciting talent like Jofra Archer, no one knew and we picked him. Like that that we will keep looking for those outstanding individual players and if we can introduce them into a system, cultivate them and culture them that will be brilliant.

Difference you find working in IPL and BPL