Friday marked the end of the Bangladesh Premier League T20's opening Dhaka phase where the expectation of high-scoring matches was fulfilled to a large extent.

There were a number of off-field fiascos taking place, most notably with the ticketing issue but the action on the ground seems to have suppressed those externalities.

A total of eight matches were held in the first Dhaka phase between December 30 and January 3. Although not too many matches delivered nail-biters, the majority of the matches gave the fans what they crave for in T20 cricket -- high-scoring affairs.

In the opening seven games, the average score was 156 runs with three of those 14 innings witnessing scores of 200 or more. Among the rest of the innings, teams scored 150-plus on seven other occasions and the average first innings total in those matches was 180.43 -- much higher than last year's first innings Dhaka phase total of 157.25.

"This year we had given only one instruction to the curators, which was to prepare sporting wickets. On previous occasions, the curators received three to four types of instructions which confused them," Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Faruque Ahmed told reporters in Mirpur yesterday.

Meanwhile, BCB's ground's committee chairman Mahbubul Anam credited the batters for the high scores while attributing the rest for the ground as a key reason for high scores.

"Batsmen are performing really well this year," Mahbubul told the Daily Star over phone from Australia yesterday.

"We always try to provide good wickets. This year, we got an advantage that we had a lot of rest for the wickets. We didn't let people play for about a month. Last year, we hosted BPL after having 160 days of play. If you give the wicket rest, it will do good for you. You can't play in a stadium for more than 60 days whereas you play here for 180 days.

"Mirpur hosted the record number international matches in the shortest possible time. The Mirpur wickets were originally prepared by Richard Winter, who also prepared the wickets of Perth. If it's given rest, Mirpur can provide best possible wickets," he added.

As the BPL is shifting to its second phase which will be held in Sylhet between January 6 and 13 and then in Chattogram for the third phase between January 16 and 23, the board is expecting similar outcomes from those two venues. 

"The requirement was as usual. But it's great to see high-scoring matches in Mirpur. Hopefully we will get similar matches in Sylhet and Chattogram as well," BPL governing body's member secretary Nazmul Abedeen Fahim told Daily Star.     

As the tournament will return to Mirpur on January 26, the venue will get 22 more days to prepare for the business end of the league and it is expected that the venue will provide similar high-scoring matches in that period too.