"Even today Shahid Afridi called me. Some of the cricketers have abandoned other commitments to play in the BPL and now all of a sudden there is no place for us in the tournament." © Getty

Comilla Victorians owner Nafisa Kamal, on Friday (September 13), said they are shocked with the latest development involving the Bangladesh Premier League, mentioning that they did not have the chance to re-negotiate with governing council members about their demands.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board on Wednesday announced their decision not to launch the second cycle of the BPL. The BPL's governing council had several meetings with franchises in the last few weeks, and a new agreement was expected to be signed on the completion of the first cycle. However, according to the BCB there were a few franchises coming up with unreasonable demands and considering the whole situation, a decision was taken to have a T20 tournament managed by the board without any involvement of franchises.

Nafisa, meanwhile, defended the demands of the franchises and urged the BCB to reconsider. "It has been six years I have been related with BPL. I think I am the most senior owner here. I believe we have some contribution in BPL. So the process through which way we came to know that our franchise is not available this year, we have some reservations regarding it," Nafisa told reporters at her office.

"The last decision during the meeting was that we were going to get a draft on September 15 as they said they were compiling the proposals after considering our recommendations. We have held meetings with the board (BCB governing body), we had some demands for the sake of cricket. We had three transparent demands, not for me, not for the franchise - only in the support of cricket.

"The first one is revenue sharing. We are in a business agreement; this is a business model. If we follow other models, revenue sharing is everywhere except in Bangladesh. That revenue sharing is not only for me, but I am also saying on behalf of everyone because revenue sharing is good for us. If everything happens it improves for the betterment of the tournament. If that does not happen, we will have some period to think but we were not given that chance.

"The second point is - there will be three foreign players' signing, and local players will be up for grabs in a fresh auction, according to them. If that happens it becomes biased for the local players. We have to buy foreign players with more value than usual. They negotiate a lot, and there is room for negotiation which local players do not get. So I think, except some icon players, other local players are not coming with the right value towards us.

"The third point is we want to stick with drafts, we don't want an auction. These are our demands and this is for our good," she said.

Nafisa said that abandoning the BPL this way will only hamper the reputation of the game while leaving the cricketers in the dark about the future of the tournament. "Even today Shahid Afridi called me. Some of the cricketers have abandoned other commitments to play in the BPL and now all of a sudden there is no place for us in the tournament. We have an obligation to our fans and we want to play in the tournament, and so we want BCB to reconsider their decision," she said.

The franchise-based BPL started in 2012 and six editions have been held so far. The BCB now is set to conduct a T20 tournament following a model similar to that of the Big Bash League in Australia. The T20 tournament will be named after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the first president of Bangladesh), to mark his 100th birthday.