The Bangladesh Cricket Board is still hopeful that the Pakistani players would be available for the Bangladesh Premier League despite a looming boycott threat.
Pakistan Cricket Board president Zaka Ashraf on Thursday said that they would not send the Pakistani players to the BPL unless Bangladesh decides to keep its commitment to tour their country in the future.
This was viewed as a fresh threat, though Pakistan had earlier promised not to mix up the BPL issue with Bangladesh’s planned tour. The BCB was also hopeful after its president Nazmul Hasan met his counterpart Zaka in India recently.
‘I went to Delhi on the 6th of January and I had a cordial meeting with him there,’ Nazmul told reporters on Saturday. ‘What I wanted to explain was the reason behind Bangladesh not travelling. He understood our problem, was reasonable and his hospitality was really good.
‘What he said to the media was not what he told me. I still believe that, based on our cordial discussion, the Pakistani players will take part in the BPL.
‘I think it is a knee-jerk reaction, because what we discussed in Delhi, it didn’t give me a negative vibe. I think it was an impulsive reaction than anything else,’ said Nazmul, adding that they will wait for a few more days before getting sure about the Pakistani players’ participation in the BPL. 
‘We will wait for a day or two, because we haven’t received anything in this regard from the PCB that they will refuse to send their players,’ he said. 
Nazmul added that they will send a fresh security delegation to Pakistan in March-April to decide if the country can be deemed safe to tour. A Bangladeshi delegation, led by the then BCB president AHM Mustafa Kamal, had visited Pakistan in March last year and found the situation satisfactory.
However, the High Court blocked the tour after a petition was submitted by a private university teacher and a Supreme Court lawyer. 
‘We haven’t made any specific decisions about the tour but we discussed our end of the problem with him. We talked about a time slot – end of March and the start of April – otherwise we will be busy in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.
‘We also think it is time to send a second security team, because a lot of time has passed after the last one. We will send the security team as soon as possible, and we will sit in the next few days with the government about forming a team,’ he said.