Dhangadi Cricket Academy (DCA) and Sudur Paschimanchal Academy (SPA) are jointly organising the lucrative Sagarmatha Cement Dhangadi Premier League (DPL) Twenty20 cricket from March 18, 2017.

The tournament will be contested by six franchises representing cities following an auction of the players with national cricketers set the highest base prize of Rs 50,000. Former national players and U-19 national cricketers have the base price of Rs 30,000 and uncapped players are set a base price of Rs 20,000.

Kathmandu, Rupandehi, Dhangadi and Attariya are the four cities which have confirmed their participation. Two more cities will seal their confirmation in due course, said the organisers. The organisers will make public the name of city teams, their owner and skipper on January 5.

Cricketers need to register their names before December 30 deadline to be included for auction, scheduled for January 7. National cricket team skipper Paras Khadka registered himself online during a tournament announcement ceremony in Kathmandu on Wednesday. The tournament will be held in round robin league from where the top four teams head into playoffs. Top two teams will play the first qualifier from where the winner will reach the final. The losers will wait in the second qualifier to meet the winners of the match between the third and fourth placed team in the eliminator. 

DPL has been modelled into a city-based franchise cricket merging the organisers’ previous two competitions—SPA Cup and Dhangadi Cricket League (DCL). While SPA Cup was a nationwide inter-college cricket tournament, DCL was contested between six teams owned by franchises from Dhangadi city. 

DCA Chairman and SPA Director Subash Bahadur Shahi said DPL was materialised following a long homework. “We have a small team but we worked day in and day out to finalise this concept. We are pretty sure that we will have more cities joining us in near future,” said Shahi whose brainchild DCL was also contested following an auction of the players and included mainly the players from Dhangadi.

National team captain Khadka lauded the initiation from Shahi. “This is a great initiation from Subash considering how the domestic cricket is going at the current situation. As players we are very happy that cricket has moved out of Kathmandu,” said Khadka. 

“I hope every city follows in the footsteps of Dhangadi and if we get six or seven tournament of this magnitude then it will be wonderful for domestic cricket. This is a beginning and if we can bring in more tournaments in multiple formats—two-day, one-day and three-day—it would be a big leap,” added the national team skipper.

Each team will consist of 15 players and a coach with two foreign players allowed in a team. The champions of the tournament will walk away with Rs 1.5 million, making it the highest cash-prize in the history of Nepali cricket so far. The runners-up will get Rs 700,000. 

While the man-of-the-series will ride a motorcycle, each man-of-the-match 

will get Rs 10,000. The organisers will give away Rs 2.85 million alone in cash prizes in the tournament that has estimated budget of Rs 10.6 million. Shahi on Wednesday also signed sponsorship agreement with Ghorahi Cement Director Sanjay Bansal.