BPL TREATS TEAMS UNFAIRLY AND WITHOUT TRANSPARANCY

  • October 5, 2019

Every team and league looks forward for an exciting playoffs season. Unfortunately this did not happen at Bolingbrook Premier League (BPL). It is a common practice for teams and players to play in multiple teams. In support of this, every league try’s to accommodate the players / teams availability to publish the playoff schedule .
For the 2019 playoffs, BPL considered availability of all teams and did not consider the availability of Chicago United, a very strong contender for all three divisions (Div 1, Div 2 and NPD) . CU is Div 1 and Div 2 finalist, 2018.
Keeping fairness, transparency and quality cricket in the forefront, Chicago United repeatedly (over five days) requested the league for a group meeting with the league management and other teams. Unfortunately BPL did not oblige to it and confirmed unchanged schedule late night on Friday 11 pm for Saturday morning matches. While Chicago United had open and public communications (in BPL league groups) with BPL for a confirmation before noon, Friday to line up players.
Hence, this weekend Chicago United wasn’t able to play the NPD finals (CU was top seed) , Div 1 (SF – qualifier, CU was top seed) and Div 2 (QF, CU was number five seed) this weekend . BPL awarded these matches to other respective teams in an unfairly manner.
In another incident, Chicago United’s matches were called “rained out” and other teams played a match on the same location, day and time while Chicago United players returned home.
CU hosted a meeting with many other team captains to discuss several other issues with the league. Amongst them was lack or late communications from league management, barley any ground preparations, broken commitments, manipulations to offset team seeding by league management etc
I request all Chicago area leagues to treat teams fairly with transparency and quality cricket as driving factors. It’s a best practice for leagues to have a team representative for open discussions (not 1 one 1) with leagues.
Sharing this incident with our cricket fraternity so such incidents are not repeated in any league with any team and the patron teams are treated fairly with transparency in a timely manner .
Best wishes to all teams in the next round of playoffs. As always, Let’s play better cricket – TOGETHER!