Bangladesh Cricket Board have allowed Mustafizur Rahman to register for the Indian Premier League auction in order to regain his form. In July last year, the board had barred the pacer from playing T20 leagues because of injury concerns. BCB are more confident of managing Mustafizur's injury and his workload if he's picked for the tournament. Six Bangladesh cricketers registered have thrown their hats in the ring - Tamim Iqbal, Mehidy Hasan, Mustafizur, Soumya Sarkar, Mahmudullah and Taskin Ahmed - with the auction set to be held on December 19.
BCB cricket operation chairman Akram Khan insisted that board changed their stance because Mustafizur is looking more settled with his injury management. "At that point we did not allow him to make him available for franchise-based cricket largely due to his injury. Now he is looking more settled and he is playing for quite some time [without picking up any serious injury]," said Akram. "He played in the National Cricket League [first-class competition] and took part in the tour of India. If he can manage things properly then there is very little chance of picking up injury. To be honest we are concerned with his form because he is a very important bowler for us. If he gets a chance to play in the IPL and if he can regain his form by playing there then it would be extremely helpful for us."
Mustafizur's performance in the T20I series in India turned out to be underwhelming as he failed to pick up just one wicket in the three games and leaked runs at 9.51. He has played 24 IPL games and has 24 wickets at an average of 28.54. As many as 971 players have thrown their hat in the ring. A total of 713 Indian and 258 overseas players will jostle to make the final shortlist for just the 73 vacant spots across the eight teams. This big list of players will get pruned before it goes under the hammer at the auction. The franchises now need to submit their shortlist from the pool of registered players before the 5 PM IST deadline on December 9.
