
Shakib Al Hasan, the top all-rounder for Bangladesh, decried the Bangladesh Premier League’s failure to develop into one of the top T20 tournaments in the world. Shakib claimed that not enough effort had been put into making the BPL one of the most successful leagues two days before the start of the ninth edition.
“I don’t know about the standard of BPL,” Shakib told reporters. “It is difficult to say whether we could not or didn’t want (to make it successful). I don’t see any reason not to do if we want with the possibility we have in Bangladesh. I think we’ve never wanted to do anything honestly,” he added.
“There is no market (for BPL) because we could not create a market for it because if we could add value to it certainly this market would have been a big one. You won’t find any remote area where cricket is not played. You go to the remotest area and even there people play cricket with a bat and a ball. So it is not a fact that it doesn’t have popularity. So it is difficult to believe there is no market in a country with the population of 16 to 20 Crore where the sport has such a popularity. So this is a big failure from a marketing point of view because that is the reason we could not create a market like it (IPL),” he said.