Bangladesh’s first women’s three-day competition to start in December

The Women’s Bangladesh Cricket League (WBCL), the country’s first three-day competition for women, will begin at two venues in Rajshahi on December 21. The BCB has organised the tournament to set in motion the process to build its first Test side, although the board is yet to put a timeline in place.

“We have to be ready in red-ball cricket,” head of women’s cricket at BCB, Habibul Bashar, said. “Most of our female cricketers haven’t seen the red ball at all. It is all about white-ball cricket for them, as all our domestic cricket is with the white ball. They have only played two red-ball games, maybe. We will apply for first-class status as we have all that’s needed for this type of cricket.”

The tournament is going to be played between four teams, grouped by the regions – North, South, East and West. Nigar Sultana, Fahima Khatun, Rabeya Khan and Sobhana Mostary have been named captains of the four sides.

“It is a very good initiative from the BCB,” Bashar said. “The challenge was to start it, so we got a bit of time this month. We have the West Indies tour coming up. We needed to start the tournament. We won’t have time until June next year.”

Bashar said that the plan was to give the Bangladesh players bound for the West Indies next month enough time, so four matches will be held in December. The rest of the tournament will be played in January.

Bangladesh received the Full Member status in women’s cricket in 2021 alongside Afghanistan (which doesn’t have a women’s national team) and Zimbabwe, and this is the second edition of the WBCL, which was played in a two-day format in 2023. Of the countries that have women’s multi-day cricket, there’s the Senior Women’s Inter Zonal Multi-Day Trophy in India, while Australia have recently begun three-day trial games for their red-ball team.

Mohammad Isam is ESPNcricinfo’s Bangladesh correspondent. @isam84