Sports Live; Bangladesh Cricket Board President Nazmul Hassan Papon said on Saturday that hosting Dhaka Premier League, the country’s traditional Dhaka-club based tournament, is very unlikely in the present situation.

“It is difficult to start the Premier League in this condition and I don’t think it would be right to play in this situation,” Nazmul told reporters after receiving his second dose of Covid-19 vaccine in a city hospital.

Bangladesh Football Federation recently announced the resumption of Bangladesh Premier League from April 30 that created mixed reactions amongst the participating clubs.

Nazmul insisted that they are not willing to take any risk adding that only assurance of a bio-bubble environment can pave ways for DPL that was suspended in the third week of March 2020.

“Until we can ensure bio-bubble there is no question of playing whether that is one team or 10 teams. BCB is trying their best but they need to convince me that they can arrange the game in the bio-bubble only then we will play. But I think that possibility is very slim,” he said.

BCB failed to finish DPL last season due to the Covid-19 pandemic but it did manage to host two domestic tournaments last year in the new normal environment - BCB President’s Cup and Bangabandhu T20 Cup.

BCB also began National Cricket League this year but they had to postpone it only after two rounds due to the rise of coronavirus in the country.

Meanwhile, Nazmul expressed his satisfaction with the proceeding in Sri Lanka, courtesy of the involvement of Khaled Mahmud in the national set-up, as now they are having better communication which was missing during the home series against West Indies.

“I was told about the decisions and the proceedings this time around which I didn’t know in the previous series. Obviously, Khaled Mahmud has been a huge help for the team as he always tries his best to inspire the team and we need someone like that in the team,” said Nazmul.

“We often get disappointed when they lose but there are reasons behind the loss as we had approached with different strategies and we obviously had some communication gap among us,” he added.

Dhaka, 24 April (campuslive24.com)//BSC