BPL must improve standards to draw foreign cricketers: Lisa Sthalekar

FE Team | Published: June 15, 2026 00:16:07

Lisa Sthalekar, former Australian women's cricketer and current president of the World Cricketers' Association (WCA), said on Sunday that the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), the country's lone franchise-based T20 tournament, needs to improve its overall standards to attract foreign cricketers, reports Cricbuzz.
In the recent past, the WCA released an assessment based on metrics developed in conjunction with, and considered important by, players, agents and players' associations. The metrics are based on key benchmarks in cricket and other sports, while major domestic leagues are defined as those featuring five or more current Full Member international cricketers as overseas players.
According to the assessment, which covered 10 T20 tournaments, The Hundred leads with 75.2 points, while the BPL is at the bottom of the list with 22.6 points. The IPL is third with 62.6 points, behind SA20, which earned 68 points.
The WCA president urged the newly formed Cricket Welfare Association of Bangladesh (CWAB) to work together with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) and ensure that the tournament, which has been largely criticised for non-payment and fixing issues, gets a fresh start that will encourage foreign cricketers to participate.
"What the World Cricketers' Association does, and we have it on our website, is almost a traffic-light system of all the T20 leagues around the world. It's to help players, administrators and agents understand what the issues have been and what the successful aspects of each T20 league are," Sthalekar told reporters at Mirpur.
"Obviously, if you look at the BPL, its traffic light doesn't have a lot of green, unfortunately. Speaking to Mithun (president of the CWAB), I said this is an opportunity for them as a new organisation and executive committee to work with the Bangladesh Cricket Board to ensure that overseas players want to come here and play, and that they can potentially move into the amber and green categories," she said.