A good read. But there are points that I can't agree with WW. I am reposting my opinion on decentralization which I think is more appropiate to this thread :
Decentralization - It does not make sense to me. For betterment of Bangladesh cricket, I believe we need a strong centralized professional league, and Dhaka premier league is currently serving that purpose. It was DPL that had helped us to gain international status. After all those years, DPL is still far far ahead of other leagues in the country in terms of popularity, competitiveness, organizational and financial strength.
If you look at Sri Lanka, their FC league is basically a Colombo based club league with few clubs from other parts of the country incorporated. The interprovincial tournament that WW talks about only took place in 2004 and 2005, thereafter the unpopular event was discontinued.
Back to our case - regardless of what a cricket crazy nation we are, I don't think we have the financial strength to support more than one professional league (Corporate league and NCL give us ample proof here). Also, by making the players play for different teams in different leagues (CCL, DPL, and NCL) in the same season, we are hampering the players from developing the sense of belonging to one team (which I think is an important requisite for competitiveness in team sports).
By ignoring the DPL (and trying to promote a picnic league as called by some ex-nationals), BCB have actually weakened the strength of our domestic structure in last few years. What they need to do is to pour more money into DPL and ask the clubs to start a FC league in parallel to existing oneday and twenty20 leagues. Clubs should be also told to start age levels teams to groom talents.
One objection against DPL is that it has too many teams. Also teams such as Old DOHS and Indira Road have big strength difference. Well, this problem can be solved by breaking the teams into two tiers with promotion and relagation (like English county league).
This does not mean leagues outside Dhaka should be ignored. BCB should also make it a priority to revive leagues in places like Chittagong, Mymensingh, Khulna, Rajshahi, and Sylhet. If financially possible, BCB should encourage top clubs from those areas to join Dhaka first division and try to gain entry into DPL (like Young Pegasus from Rajshahi did).
BCB can also continue to run a league for division/district based teams, excluding DPL players, that will help them spot talents outside DPL.
PS: I was born and brought up in a city 200 km away from Dhaka. I can assure you that there is no reason to think I am emotionally biased towards our capital city.
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