BCB President Aminul Islam Bulbul stepped in front of the cameras on Tuesday and did something rather unusual for a cricket board President, he begged. With a critical CCDM meeting scheduled for Wednesday 8 April at noon in Mirpur, Bulbul issued a direct public appeal to Dhaka’s club organisers to show up and help save the Dhaka Premier League from complete collapse.
The league, which serves as the primary source of income for a large number of Bangladeshi cricketers every year, has ground to a halt. A festering dispute between Dhaka’s sports organisers and the board, centred on election-related grievances, has locked the whole thing in a standoff, with players watching their wages disappear and venting their frustration publicly on social media.
This is not a minor administrative delay. This is cricketers’ livelihoods on the line. Bulbul addressed the media and made his case plainly, appealing directly through journalists to reach the clubs: “We hope all the clubs will come on the 8th tomorrow, and through you we are requesting them, please, do come.”
Using the press as a conduit to reach club organisers speaks volumes about where the relationship between the board and Dhaka’s cricketing establishment currently stands. Bulbul clearly does not feel he can pick up the phone and guarantee they turn up, so he goes public instead.
He also made clear who plans to attend from the board’s side, adding genuine weight to the occasion: “Our CCDM chairman will be there, and our vice-president Faruque Ahmed is also expected to attend. We want to say, it’s already very late. Come on, let’s just play the league, because this is our only 50-over List-A tournament.”
That last point carries real sporting significance. The Dhaka Premier League is Bangladesh’s only 50-over List-A domestic tournament. Every run, every wicket, every knock in that competition feeds directly into the national selection conversation and a player’s case for higher honours.
Let it die, and you gut the development pathway entirely. Bulbul acknowledged the lateness of the hour without dressing it up: “Since we’ve come right down to the wire, we want to see a highly competitive Dhaka Premier League.”
That is a BCB president admitting, in public, that time has nearly run out. There is no spin there, and credit to him for saying it straight.
The question now sits entirely with the club organisers. They hold the power to either walk into that Mirpur room on Wednesday and thrash out a solution, or stay away and let a generation of cricketers pay the price for a political dispute that has nothing to do with what happens on the pitch.
