West Indies players who participated in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) T20 team in 2012, will soon get the money (taka) owned to them.
The failure by the BLP to pay the players recently caused some tense moments when West Indies met Bangladesh in their Test and ODI series in the Caribbean.
Quick-scoring opener Chris Gayle was bought by Barisal for US$551,000. His compatriot Marlon Samuels was snapped up Rajshahi for US$360,000, while the big hitting Trinidadian Kieron Pollard fetched US$300,000 from the Dhaka franchise.
Other West Indians in the mix were Dwayne Bravo (Chittagong US$150,000), Kevon Cooper (Chittagong US$50,000 and Samuel Badree (US$50,000). The tournament which ended in disgrace with a cloud of match fixing, fell apart because most of the franchises could not pay their overseas players.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) who are the guarantors of the tournament, tried to get the franchises to meet their obligations but failed. The Federation of International Cricket Associations (FICA) then called on the BCB to ensure payments since they were the guarantors of the tournament. A BCB official yesterday revealed that the monies owed will be paid as the BCB looks to clean up its image.
Since then there has been no domestic T20 cricket tournament in Bangladesh and there are no representatives from that country in the current Champions League T20 tournament in India.
Only yesterday, former Bangladesh captain Mohammad Ashraful had his eight-year ban for involvement in corruption reduced to a five-year penalty, with two years suspended, by the BCB's disciplinary panel chairman. Ashraful had appealed to the disciplinary panel chief, Justice Mohammad Abdur Rashid, in July, asking that the ban he received a month earlier, for his involvement in match and spot-fixing in the Bangladesh Premier League, be reduced. The five-year ban is dated from August 13, 2013.
The last two years are suspended subject to his participation in a BCB or ICC anti-corruption education and training programme. "Upon production of a certificate of good conduct from ICC," a BCB release said, he will be eligible to return to cricket "on or about August 13, 2016."