The Bangladesh Premier League's governing council official said on Wednesday that the board decided to strip off Barisal Bulls from the ongoing franchise-based Twenty20 competition as they failed to put up the required appearance fee.
BPL 2017-18
Barisal Bulls ousted from BPL
Mustafizur Rahman won't be an icon player for the season, and is likely to go into the auction pool © Getty
The decision was announced by BPL governing council chairman Afzalur Rahman Sinha after an official meeting, where it was also decided that the upcoming edition of BPL will be played between seven teams instead of eight.
"We have decided to strip them [franchise Barisal Bulls] from the upcoming edition of BPL," Sinha told reporters on Wednesday. "They failed to put up any kind of franchise fee required to take part in the tournament," he said.
"During the last board meeting we had given them August 7 as deadline for submitting their dues but as they failed to do so, we have to take this decision," he said. "We have to prepare the fixture for the next edition while we have to take other preparation as well. So we decided to host the upcoming BPL with seven teams," he said.
BPL was halted after the first two editions due to match fixing scandal that claimed to have taken country's cricket fraternity by utter surprise as they had to see one of their favourite cricketer Mohammad Ashraful, being in the match-fixing racket.
In 2015, BPL was re-launched after being aborted for two seasons with corruption scandal and the BPL governing council official had said that the franchise will have to provide TK 4.5 crore[BDT] as bank guarantee and TK 1 crore[BDT] as appearance fee for the tournament.
No 'icon' status for Mustafizur Rahman
Afzalur Rahman said that they are yet to decide about country's leading left-arm pace bowler