D3 Trophy Auction: Tanjid's 2 Crore Points, Rishad's 60 Lakh—and the Calendar That Set the Price

The auction room scoreboard was glowing not with rupees but with points. When Tanjid Hasan Tamim's name reached 2 crore points, a strange silence fell over the press box. Finals have a roar, but the press box has a silence I still report. I was watching from the Pune bureau the way I used to watch Ranchi and Rajkot scorecards come in on the ticker in the 1980s. I have been on the cricket desk for 45 years, and I remember that when the Bangladesh Cricket Board first spoke of a domestic T20 league, the same question sat in the press box—would it be a BPL imitation or something new?

It is something new. The D3 Trophy is the Bangladesh Cricket Board's new domestic T20 competition, scheduled to begin in December 2026. Six franchises are involved—Acme, Fortune, Walton, Seven Rings Cement, Citizens Bank and Aces Blu Stars. The auction pool had 281 domestic cricketers, of whom 275 went under the hammer and six icon players were pre-assigned. The biggest detail: this auction was conducted not in money but in points. That is where the story turns. In a conventional auction, the team with more money has more scope to pick players. Here the board fixed a points currency so that financial inequality would not translate directly into bidding power. But that single decision removed the biggest anchor in league economics—price. The points currency made it impossible to say what a player is actually worth; 2 crore points are not 2 crore rupees. That distinction matters, because reading “2 crore” in a headline creates the impression of a market benchmark. It is not one.

Then there is the confusion the headline created. “Mehedi-Shanto at 1.5 crore” reads as if one Mehedi is being discussed. The record shows two different cricketers: Sheikh Mehedi Hasan, the T20 off-spin all-rounder, who went to Aces Blu Stars for 1.5 crore points; and Mehedi Hasan Miraz, the Test off-spinner, who is Walton's icon player. This is not just a naming slip; it is a source-integrity issue. Any summary that merges the two will be unreliable. I keep the old notebook because the game forgets faster than the record does, and that notebook says joining names is as easy as it is dangerous.

Look at the price ladder. Tanjid 2 crore, Shanto 1.6 crore, Sheikh Mehedi 1.5 crore, Soumya Sarkar 75 lakh, Mustafizur Rahman 70 lakh, Rishad Hossain 60 lakh. The surface reading says the highest bid belongs to the best player. But Mustafizur is the most accomplished T20 bowler in this auction—yet he went for less than Soumya. The reason was not ability but availability. The Bangladesh Cricket Board granted him a Big Bash League NOC, meaning he cannot play the D3 T20 edition at all. Rishad Hossain is even clearer: the report states outright that he is unavailable for the T20 edition, yet he was bought for 60 lakh points. Availability, not ability, was the dominant pricing variable in this auction. That is not a moral judgment; it is the plain reading of the record.

There is another layer that the auction-room glitter hides. Franchises are buying BBL-committed players at a discount, but they are not buying them purely as T20 match-winners. They are buying partial assets—icon value, mentoring roles, future-format potential. Paying 60 lakh points for Rishad is not a purchase for T20 availability; it is a price paid for an option. This is risk transfer: the franchise takes on the risk that the investment may pay off in later editions or other formats. But it has a direct effect on squad balance. Fortune spent a total of 4.95 crore points on Tanjid (2 crore), Shanto (1.6 crore), Soumya (75 lakh) and Rishad (60 lakh)—before the icon assignment of Towhid Hridoy. Fortune spent the most in the auction, but that spend may make their batting heavy and their bowling thin. The purse size is undisclosed, so this is not a final verdict, but it is a warning sign.

The icon system is the quietest and most important part of this auction. Six franchises, six icons—Nurul Hasan Sohan (Aces Blu Stars), Towhid Hridoy (Fortune), Mosaddek Hossain Saikat (Acme), Mohammad Naim Sheikh (Citizens Bank), Mushfiqur Rahim (Seven Rings Cement) and Mehedi Hasan Miraz (Walton). The one-icon-per-team allocation is a deliberate competitive-balance device, not a super-franchise model. The board anticipated unequal bidding capacity and pre-corrected for it. That is a point in its favour, but it also shows that the league's design is parity-first rather than revenue-maximising. Points instead of money, one icon per team, a domestic-only player pool—all three are equalisation levers. It also means treating the auction as a “market signal” would be a mistake. It is the product of administrative design.

Now the part that sits outside the headlines. The D3 Trophy will start in December, and December is the month when the Big Bash League runs. The BCB granted Rishad and Mustafizur BBL NOCs—in the same window as its own new T20 league. That NOC decision is the biggest governance story in this article. It made clear that established foreign leagues currently outrank the D3 T20 edition. That is not an accusation; it is what the record says. If Bangladesh's top five to eight players choose the BBL every December, the D3 T20 edition could become a second-tier product in its first year. The board's answer lies either in changing the window or in multi-format contracts.

A contrarian reading is necessary here. From the outside, it looks as if Fortune won the auction—the most expensive player, the second most expensive, and an icon. But Fortune's big bidding is not a sign of victory; it is a sign of structural inefficiency. A team that pays 60 lakh points for a player who cannot play the T20 edition is compromising its bowling and bench depth. That compromise only makes sense if the purse is larger or the contract is multi-season. Neither is public. So equating “most expensive” with “strongest” does not do justice to this record. In a points currency, “most expensive” is an internal ordinal, not a market value. That is the central tension of this article.

I also note that there is no performance data in the league. Tanjid, Shanto and Mushfiqur built their reputations mainly in Tests and ODIs. Their value in domestic T20 is unproven. The report has no strike rate, average, economy rate or phase splits. So saying Tanjid “deserved” 2 crore points on performance cannot be validated from this material. What can be validated is relative pricing—Mustafizur at 70 lakh, Soumya at 75 lakh. That anomaly is the real story. Where availability sets the price, the claim of performance is left behind. Readers should know that auction noise is not proof of performance.

Now the forward look. The future of the D3 T20 will be decided not by Tanjid's 2 crore points but by the December calendar and NOC policy. If the board publishes the purse size, the points-to-taka conversion and the multi-format contract structure before the first ball, the auction will be easier to understand. If it does not, the league will be seen in its first season as a development project—where there are fewer stars and more administrative intentions. The quietest witness in the stadium is usually the one with the longest memory. I ask as that witness: will the board publish its purse and conversion logic before the first ball? That is the real test, because the glow of 2 crore points cannot cover the silence of a calendar where two stars are playing in another league.