Will the tide turn in the port city?

Competitions like the Bangladesh Premier League progress at breakneck speed – 24 matches across the Dhaka and Sylhet legs have gone by in the blink of an eye since the tournament started on November 4. It is in such a frenzied environment when the briefest of respites can make a world of difference, and as the fifth edition's Chittagong leg starts today with Khulna Titans taking on Rangpur Riders in the day match and Chittagong Vikings squaring off against Sylhet Sixers in the evening encounter, three of the four teams will hope that a change in venue brings about a change in results.

There is precedent for this. The BPL started off in Sylhet this year and the home team made a flying start, winning three of their four matches in front of an adoring and excited crowd. However, their mojo seemed to have been lost in transit when the scene shifted to Dhaka, where the Sixers have succumbed to three consecutive losses. That is why they have slipped from top position at the end of the Sylhet leg and are currently fourth.

Last year, when the Chittagong leg began, the top three were Dhaka Dynamites, Barisal Bulls and Khulna Titans. By the time the Chittagong leg ended, Dhaka had slipped to third, Rangpur shot up from fourth to first with an all-win record in the port city and Khulna held their own to rise to second.

There is the possibility of a similar uprising this time too in Chittagong. Through some sort of serendipity, second-placed Dhaka will play just two matches in Chittagong and table-toppers Comilla Victorians, led by local hero Tamim Iqbal, will play three. Bottom-placed Chittagong Vikings, meanwhile, will have ample opportunity to start a stirring fightback buoyed by home support as they will be playing four matches over the next week, the most among the seven teams.

"The points table we have now may well change," said Tamim during practice at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, the venue for the matches, yesterday. "It will depend on the results. Those who are on top will be breathing easy because they played well in the first half of the tournament. At the end of the day this is cricket, anything can happen in this game."

Another kind of change is already underway. For much of the tournament, a common complaint was that local players were not pulling their weight in an edition that reverted to the five-foreigners-per-team quota, with no local player making it to the top five in the run-scorers' list. But Comilla Victorians opener Imrul Kayes and Khulna Titans skipper Mahmudullah Riyad have made it to numbers four and five respectively on that list, while Mahmudullah's teammate Abu Jayed, Dhaka Dynamites' pacer Abu Hider and Dhaka skipper Shakib Al Hasan occupy positions one, three and four in the wicket-takers' chart.

With the tournament nearly halfway through and the locals starting to come to the party, it may be a very different points table when the T20 festival makes its way out of the port city.