Fortune Barishal opt out of BPL for next cycle spanning five years

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has announced that defending champions of the Bangladesh Premier League, Fortune Barishal owned by Fortune Shoes, has opted out from the tournament in the next cycle, spanning for five editions.

Cricbuzz earlier reported Fortune Barishal requested the board to reschedulethe tournament as they feel they cannot form their team in a short time span. The player draft is slated to be on November 17 while the next BPL season is scheduled for the December-January window, with a tentative start date of December 19.

A total of 11 organisations have submitted their Expression of Interest (EOI) to the BCB for franchise ownership on the final day of submission which ended on October 28.

Champions Sports Limited (proposed team: Dhaka Capitals), Triangle Services Limited (Chattogram team), SQ Sports Enterprise Limited (Chattogram Kings), First SS Enterprise Private Limited (Kumilla Fighters), Togi Sports Limited (Rangpur Riders), Bangla Mark Limited (Noakhali team), Mind Free Limited & Ruposhi Concrete Product Limited (Khulna team), Akashbari Holidays and Resorts (Barishal team), Desh Travels (Rajshahi team), Nabil Group of Industries (Rajshahi team), and JM Sports and Enterprise (Sylhet team).

"We have received these 11 EOIs and now we will be following the criteria we have while the next step is that we will assess their financial strength and the day after tomorrow (30th October) we will call them for individual interviews," BCB president Aminul Islam told reporters at Navana Tower on Tuesday.

"The name you mentioned (Fortune Barishal) is not in the EOIs we received today," he added.

BCB receive final report from BPL investigation committee

The three-member independent inquiry committee that had been investigating fixing issues in the 2024-25 submitted the final report comprising 900 pages to the BCB on Tuesday after conducting its inquiries over the last nine months.

Earlier in February, the BCB announced that an independent inquiry bodywould be formed to support the board and the BCB Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) with integrity issues and investigations after several corruption allegations were reported in the media.

Later, the BCB formed a three-member committee headed by former justice of the appellate division, Justice Mirza Hussain Haider and included former cricketer Shakil Kasem and international lawyer Dr. Khaled H. Chowdhury as the other members.

The BCB had earlier received an initial document from the inquiry committee and Aminul said that the board had already begun working based on that preliminary report.

"We received an initial report in September, and today we received a consolidated report of 900 pages, which will not only be useful for the BPL inquiry but has also provided us with some guidelines. Since it's a large volume, we are working on it, and after receiving the initial document, we had already begun work based on that," said Aminul.

Cricbuzz understand there are couples of names in the report as suspected with wrong doings while BCB insisted that they would not make their names public.

BCB vice president Shakhawat Hossain said that they would not allow the charge-sheeted cricketers to take part in the upcoming domestic tournament.

"Look we don't have the authority to disclose their names but everyone will understand eventually when they will not be allowed to play, and you must understand that we are not a court," said Sakhawat

Everyone has individual rights and human rights so if someone have done something with a particular sport and his charge is framed in that case that individual will be kept away from the game," he said.

It will also raise question whether reputation of players may be at risk of being tarnished who may not be picked in domestic cricket despite having no involvement in fixing, and in response Aminul insisted that that "ultimately the names will come out."

The BCB established an independent integrity unit named the Bangladesh Cricket Board Integrity Unit (BCBIU), which will be headed by Alex Marshall as independent chairman.