Dhaka Premier League postponed again

The BCB has postponed the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League, Bangladesh's domestic one-day competition, for an unspecified period of time. Earlier this week, BCB president Nazmul Hassan had admitted to being unsure about holding the league at this stage, with the ICC's Anti-Corruption and Security Unit's report on the alleged corruption in the Bangladesh Premier League still pending.

This is the third such delay for the tournament; it was originally pushed back from March this year because Bangladesh were touring Sri Lanka at the time, before a players' strike in late May forced the BCB into declaring that the league would begin in early July.

"The player recruitment programme and the commencement of the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League 2012-13, originally scheduled for June 23 and July 3 respectively, have been deferred due to unavoidable circumstances," a BCB text message said. "Fresh dates for the player recruitment programme and the schedule for the league will be announced soon."

Hassan had said on Wednesday that he was unsure whether the tournament would go ahead as scheduled. His anxiety lay in the possibility of the ACSU finding more names, apart from just Mohammad Ashraful's, implicated in the alleged corruption, and he called the ACSU report his "topmost priority". Hassan said that he expected to receive the ACSU report during the ICC's annual conference, which will be held in London from June 25 to 29.

He had hinted at a process by which the report will be scrutinised, following which the BCB will take its decisions based on the ACSU's recommendations. The entire process will take at least a few weeks.

That would likely push the league into the 2013-14 season, which was what was supposed to happen in the first place - prior to the protests - given the work that's going on in stadiums around the country in view of the 2014 World T20. The delay will further hit Bangladesh's professional players' finances.