Chris Gayle and Mahela Jayawardene to play in Bangladesh Premier League

The upcoming BPL season in this year-end will see the likes of world beaters such as Chris Gayle, Mahela Jayawardene play in the domestic T20 Cricket tournament in Bangladesh. The official fixtures of the tournament have not come out yet, however, it is expected that the Bangladesh Premier League 2016 will go down as the same time-period of the previous edition, which was played between November-December.

The Chittagong Vikings have secured the services of West Indian big-hitter Chris Gayle whereas his compatriot Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell has been picked up by Dhaka Dynamites as well as Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, and Ravi Bopara, BDcricteam reported.

Seven teams are expected to participate in the fourth edition of BPL. Rajshahi and Khulna are among the two new participants to the tournament.

According to BPL GC chairman Afzalur Rahman Sinha, “We have included two new teams – Khulna and Rajshahi. There were many others who had shown interest on buying a franchise but we have a tight national calendar ahead. The Bangladesh team will have a camp in Australia before they tour New Zealand in December so we cannot include more teams in the BPL as it will only extend the fixture.”

Khulna and Rajshahi are making a comeback to the domestic competition after a change in the ownerships. The teams were previously owned by Orion Group (Khulna) and Digital Auto Care (Rajshahi) and have now been bought by Mango Entertainment and Gemcon Group respectively.

According to BDcricteam, the governing committee of Bangladesh Premier League has decided seven ‘icon’ Cricketers for the forthcoming tournament this year. Reported by BDcricteam, Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Mortaza and country’s all-time highest wicket-taker Shakib Al Hasan are two of the seven icon cricketers decided by the governing committee. The others are Mushfiqur Rahim, Sabbir Rahman, Soumya Sarkar, Tamim Iqbal and Mahmudullah Riyad.

In a rather busy period, most of the participating clubs have secured specific players into their squad. Dhaka and Chittagong are in a busy transfer race, whilst Rangpur Riders and Duronto Rajshahi have included the likes of Shahid Afridi and Darren Sammy to their ranks.

However, the official players’ draft of the forthcoming Bangladesh Premier League will take place on 30th September. The BPL Governing Committee has allowed the franchises to retain two local players from last season.

The Sylhet franchise has been taken off from the tournament and will not be participating in this year’s BPL, the Bangladesh Cricket Board announced on Wednesday.