The BPL governing council at a meeting on Wednesday announced that the second edition of the Bangladesh Premier League will begin from January 17, 2013, with a major change in the players’ fee cap.
The inaugural edition of the Twenty20 league, an identical version of the Indian Premier League, caused heavy controversies with its rules and regulations while the franchise owners were also accused of not paying the players their contracted amount.
The franchises auction for BPL-2 will be held on November 9 as the governing council believes that some of the current franchisees will not be able to meet certain criteria and they will be up for sale.
Dhaka and Rajshahi are the most likely sides to be up for grab once again as they have already failed to meet certain criteria in the first season.
‘We have many people interested in buying the BPL franchises. So if somebody fails to meet the criteria we will scrap them from the tournament and will auction off their respective franchises,’ said BPL governing council chairman Gazi Ashraf Hossain.   
The completion of the franchise auction will be followed by the revamped players’ auction on December 7.
The quota of the icon players has been removed as the auction for the players will be led by the ‘Golden’ category, top performers of the game, whose base price will be $75,000 while the final bidding price is set to be $150,000.
At the previous auction Dhaka Gladiators bought
Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi for $700,000, the maximum amount
by far, while he was followed by Chris Gayle of West Indies, who was bought by the Barisal Burners for $551,000.
Both the players were not able to fully compete the tournament as Gayle flew out to play in South Africa’s T20 league while Afridi was on national duty and played only the semi-final and the final.
The foreign cricketers will be put under three categories – A, B and C – with the base prices of $50,000, $30,000 and $15,000 with maximum amount of $75,000, $50,000 and $30,000 respectively.
The local cricketers, also in three categories, will be priced at $30,000, $20,000 and $10,000 while their maximum bidding price will be $50,000, $30,000 and $20,000.     
Unlike the first edition, the cash-rich tournament will spread out to three grounds this time and the matches will be played at Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, Chittagong’s MA Aziz Stadium along with the latest inclusion of Khulna’s Sheikh Abu Nasser Stadium.
Two other venues, Sylhet divisional stadium and Shahid Kamruzzaman stadium in Rajshahi, will be used for warm-up matches only.