Bangladeshi Players Bring New Buzz to NPL Season 3

For the first two seasons of the Nepal Premier League, no Bangladeshi cricketer played in the tournament. In Season 3, there are ten of them, spread across five franchises, and they are already shaping matches, headlines and crowds at Kirtipur.

Ten Bangladeshi players, five franchises

A day before the third season began on October 26, three Bangladeshi journalists arrived at the TU International Cricket Ground in Kirtipur. They had travelled about 600 miles from Dhaka, they told the Kathmandu Post, because Bangladeshi players were, for the first time, part of the Nepal Premier League in numbers worth following. The trio — Kawser Shanto of Cricfrenzy, Munna Chandra Das of Sea Sports and Al Mahmud Fahim of bdcrictime.com — said they follow Bangladeshi players to franchise tournaments wherever they play, having previously covered the Pakistan Super League, the Lanka Premier League and the ILT20.

According to the Kathmandu Post, the journalists say it is the first time a franchise tournament outside Bangladesh has featured as many as ten Bangladeshi players in a single season. There were none in the first two NPL seasons. The ten are spread across five franchises, while three other franchises have signed none. The biggest name is Shakib Al Hasan, who plays for Pokhara Avengers alongside Mahedi Hasan and Mohammad Saifuddin. Karnali Yaks also have three: Ariful Islam, Jishan Alam and Akbar Ali. Kathmandu Gorkhas have Ripon Mondol, Janakpur Bolts have Saif Hassan and Parvez Hossain Emon, and Lumbini Lions have Shamim Hossain. Biratnagar Kings are among the sides without a Bangladeshi player.

Kawser's assessment explains much of the attention: he called Shakib the “biggest name in Bangladeshi cricket history”, a player with followers as well as critics. Munna put the wider trend in similar terms, saying the “NPL has its craze growing in Bangladesh”. The league has not suddenly become a Bangladeshi tournament — Sri Lanka, with eleven players, still supplies more overseas cricketers — but the Bangladeshi contingent is drawing the louder conversation, through performances on the field and a large following back home.

Ariful Islam leads the new wave

If Shakib is the reason many fans tuned in, Ariful Islam is the reason many have stayed. Opening for Karnali, the 21-year-old has scored 119 runs in three games: 44 off 22 against Kathmandu, 32 off 12 against Biratnagar and 43 off 29 against Janakpur. Karnali won the latter two games and lost the first, but Ariful's intent has not changed from match to match. After the defeat by Kathmandu on Monday, he explained his approach in one line: “Powerplay is important in T20 cricket.”

That aggression is exactly what makes a young overseas batter valuable in a short tournament. Franchises do not sign unknown 21-year-olds to accumulate quietly; they sign them to change the first six overs, and Ariful has done that in all three outings. His opening partner Jishan Alam, also 21, has had a quieter start, scoring 7 off 5 on his NPL debut against Kathmandu on Monday, but both youngsters are seen by the travelling journalists as future Bangladesh internationals: Ariful plays with his mind, Jishan is a power hitter, and performing well in the NPL is essential for both.

The significance goes beyond one purple patch. Neither Ariful nor Jishan has yet played for Bangladesh, so the NPL is, for them, an audition in front of an audience that includes their own country's selectors, journalists and fans. A league that can offer that stage — competitive cricket, televised matches, famous opponents — becomes more than a payday for emerging players. It becomes a shop window, and the fact that three Bangladeshi journalists have based themselves in Kathmandu for the tournament shows that the window is being watched.

Shakib's slow start at Pokhara

Shakib's own tournament has, so far, run in the opposite direction to Ariful's. The former world number one all-rounder in all three formats has scored 14 against Sudurpaschim, 9 against Janakpur and just 3 against Lumbini, while taking four wickets in three games. Against Lumbini on Tuesday he bowled two wicketless overs for six runs as Pokhara were bowled out for 97 and lost by eight wickets, a result covered in our account of Pokhara's winless start. BDCricTime's report of the same match confirms the key figures: Mahedi made 13 off 24, Shakib 3 off 8, and Chamika Karunaratne top-scored for Pokhara with 25 off 17.

None of that diminishes Shakib's standing, but it does reframe his role. After a last Bangladesh appearance in the Test series against India in Kanpur in September and October 2024, he is no longer the player who can be expected to carry a side on batting alone. His value at Pokhara now lies in control with the ball, experience in the field and the attention his presence brings to a franchise still searching for its first win. Pokhara have lost all three matches.

The contrast with Saif Hassan's week is instructive. Playing for Janakpur, Saif came in after the first wicket fell against Biratnagar, stayed until the last delivery, and made 71 off 47 before being caught near the boundary rope with three runs needed off the final ball. He was, in his own words, “disappointed for not being able to win it for the team”, but promised the side would do better in upcoming matches. Saif, who has played six Tests, 15 ODIs and 31 T20Is for Bangladesh, also gave the clearest explanation for why so many of his compatriots are here, calling the NPL a “good platform to showcase the skills in front of big stars” and thanking the Bangladesh Cricket Board for granting no-objection certificates easily.

What the Bangladeshi influx means for the NPL

The deeper story here is not a nationality count. It is that a league in only its third season has become a credible destination for players from a Full Member nation, including its greatest ever cricketer and a group of its brightest prospects, without those players treating it as a holiday. The journalists' presence, the no-objection certificates, the performances and the near-misses all point the same way: the NPL is being taken seriously in Dhaka, and that seriousness is self-reinforcing. The more Bangladeshi players succeed here, the more will want to come; the more who come, the more Bangladeshi media and fans will follow.

There is also a competitive edge the league should not waste. The Kathmandu Post flags one fixture the wider cricket world will watch: Pokhara against Biratnagar, or Shakib against Angelo Mathews. The pair's history goes back to the 2023 ODI World Cup, when Mathews became the first player in international history to be dismissed timed out, after an appeal from Shakib, then Bangladesh's captain. A league that can stage that rematch as a domestic franchise fixture has something no marketing budget can buy, and it should be promoted as such when the fixture arrives.

For Nepal, the lesson is broader than one season's overseas list. The points table after thirteen matches is tight, and the league's reputation will ultimately rest on whether its own players grow alongside the imports. But the Bangladeshi influx shows the mechanism working: young players from a neighbouring cricket culture are using Kirtipur to press for national selection, established stars are lending the tournament their names, and journalists are travelling to cover it. That is how a domestic league becomes a regional one — and, in Ariful's case, how a season can be announced in the powerplay.