Seven Indian players will feature in the 50-over tournament and are expected to travel this week.
The ongoing Dhaka Premier League will soon see an influx of Indian talent, as seven Indian players have been signed up by the teams of Bangladesh’s only List-A competition. Hanuma Vihari and Abhimanyu Easwaran are amongst the top names who will feature in the tournament.
Parvez Rasool, Baba Aparajith, Chirag Jani, Ashok Menaria, and Gurinder Singh will complete the Indian representation in the tournament. All the players have signed deals varying in duration and are expected to join their respective teams shortly. It is also interesting to note that none of the players from the list have been picked to play the 2022 Indian Premier League, which starts on March 26.
Vihari, who is India’s replacement for veteran Cheteshwar Pujara’s position, will return to Hyderabad for a few days before travelling to Dhaka later this week. He will miss the first three games of the season for his side, and has been replaced by Najibullah Zadran for those games. He will represent Abahani Limited in the tournament.
Meanwhile, Abhimanyu Easwaran, who has been on the radar for the Indian Test side for some time now, will play for Prime Bank in the DPL. Rasool will play for Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi, Menaria for Khelaghar, Gurinder for Gazi Group Cricketers, Jani for Legends of Rupganj, and Aparajith for Rupganj Tigers.
However, this will not be the first time that Menaria, Vihari, Rasool, Aparajith and Easwaran will be taking part in the DPL, having earlier participated in the tournament before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the 2019/20 season. Veterans such as Yusuf Pathan, Manoj Tiwary and Dinesh Karthik have also taken part in the event in previous editions.
The conventionally 50-over tournament was tweaked in 2021 to help the Bangladesh side prepare for the T20 World Cup, and as a result, no overseas participation was allowed. The DPL features 11 teams, who play each other in a round-robin format, and the top six teams proceed to play each other once in the Super League. The bottom two teams in the league stages are relegated to the first division tournament of the DPL.
This season, all teams have been given one overseas slot. Pakistan veteran Mohammed Hafeez and Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza are the two other prominent names apart from the group of Indian players who will take part in the league.
