Victoria & Brothers still short-changing players

With just a week to go for the Dhaka Premier League clubs to complete their payments to their respective players, cricketers from two clubs are still yet to get 70 per cent of their payments.

Players of Brothers Union and Victoria Sporting Club have just received 30 per cent of their payments this season, when they should have gotten at least 60 per cent by now. While players from the 10 other clubs will be expecting to get their last instalment -- 30 percent -- by next week, Brothers and Victoria are not even sure if they will receive half of what they were promised.

A week before Eid, there were two other clubs, Kalabagan Cricket Academy and Cricket Coaching School, along with Brothers and Victoria, who had not received their second instalment -- 30 percent -- in time. The Bangladesh Cricket Board stepped in and paid the players of Kalabagan and Cricket Coaching School.

Victoria and Brothers though, have not been as lucky.

“We were told that we would get the payment after Eid. I think the BCB opened just this week so it's taking some time. We may contact the board next week. Let's see what happens,” Shahriar Nafees from Brothers Union told The Daily Star yesterday.

Victoria's Nadif Chowdhury shared a similar sentiment.

“There are several players in our team who keep calling me regarding our payments and I really don't know what to say to them. Some of them are really dependent on this money and it feels sad. I hope the board does something now that Eid is over,” he told The Daily Star.

As per the rules of the tournament, the clubs should have paid the players 60 per cent of their payments by June 12.

Such is the dire scenario of the payment situation that the players have stopped contacting the clubs and in a sense have lost hope. They are now hoping that the BCB bails them out.

This is not the first time that the players' payment issue has come up in Bangladesh's domestic cricket. The BCB faced plenty of embarrassment during the first season of the Bangladesh Premier League when a number of players, both foreign and local, complained of not having received their payments.

Following the first season of the BPL, the player-by-choice system was introduced for the Dhaka Premier League, the country's premier 50-over competition, which has proved to be a disadvantage for the players.

Prior to that the players had the opportunity to directly negotiate with the clubs and receive almost their full payments before the end of the competition. However, with the new system came about a new payment system. Clubs now have to pay 30 percent before the start, 30 percent before the end of the league and the final 40 within one month after the final game.

The players have struggled to receive their wages under the new system.