Sports Desk:

The first Dhaka phase matches of the ongoing 10th edition of the Bangladesh Premier League, the country’s only franchise-based T20 competition, witnessed some common patterns which had a huge impact on the match results.

First of all, the team that won the toss, chose to field first as they preferred chasing rather than defending the total whether it was a day game or a night one and in all eight matches played in Dhaka, the outcome of the matches came in the toss winning side’s favour.

Secondly, the day’s first game had always been a low-scoring one while the night matches were high-scoring in most of the cases.

Due to the low-scoring matches, the first games on match days failed to excite the audience as much unlike the second games where teams successfully chased down big targets like 188, 178 and 162.

As the BPL is shifting to its Sylhet phase where a total of 12 matches – the highest among all BPL for this venue – are to be played at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium from Friday to 3 February, the focus will be on how the wicket will behave during the day games.

Forhad Qureshi, SICS’s media in-charge, claimed that he’s expecting high-scoring games in day games but he feared that the players are likely to struggle during the night matches because of the shivering cold weather and the dew factor.

“Sylhet always provide high-scoring matches. But this year, dew will be a big fact. After five o’clock in the evening, the temperature goes down drastically here. The weather has been very cold here for the last seven to 10 days. The fog increases at night,” Forhad told The Daily Sun on Wednesday.

“When the ball gets old during the second game, I think it will create a problem here. But I can say that runs will come here in Sylhet.

“I think there will be a good contest during the first match of the day.  The wicket is very good. I think we will witness a good number of runs.

“The wicket will surely be a sporting one. In the last NCL, BCL and also during the Test against New Zealand, our players batted really well here,” he added.

All seven teams have already arrived in the city to play their Sylhet phase matches with Durdanto Dhaka, Chattogram Challengers and Khulna Tigers reaching here on Tuesday while the others arrived on Wednesday.

Dhaka and Khulna opted for a rest day on Wednesday while Chattogram players went to Sylhet International Cricket Stadium to have a practice session.

All the teams are expected to start their full preparation for the Sylhet phase matches from today as fans, who were seen in long lines to buy BPL match tickets both at the Lakkatura Ticket Counter of SICS and Sylhet District Stadium Ticket Counter in Rikabibazar, are looking forward to witnessing some great game of cricket in the coming week.