Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has extended the national players' current contract by two months with a plan to review the payment structure after watching their performance in the National Cricket League.

BCB's Cricket Operations Committeehas taken tilisdecision in its meeting yesterday at the board's management office in Gulshan.

"You know the contracts expired on September 30, but we have decided to extended it by two months because we would like to take into account some matters before we reward the new con-

tracts," said Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, chairman of the most important committee of the board.

At the moment a total of twenty-one players, in three categories, are under the payroll.

The new committee is set to review the payment structure and it is planning to remunerate the players according to their performance and not as per the existing gradingsystem.

"We have extended the contract to create a level playing field for the cricketers in the upcoming National Cricket League before confirming the new salary structure. We want to see how the national players make the difference with the others in the competition. Performance should be the

SEE PAGE IB COL 5 FROM PAGE 17

only yardstick," explained Lipu.

The former national skipper also said that they would ask the national selectors to thoroughly scrutinise the national players' performance in the last one year.

"The selectors will examine everything like a player's ins-and-outs during this period, his overall performance, etc,” he added.

Lipu also informed that they were planning to bring five or six best performers from the National Cricket League under the payroll.

"We are determined to ensure that the country's first-class competition would be meaningful all the way. We will love to see them (cricketers) give the tournament similar importance like internationalcricket," said Lipu.

"There. is, a whispering that some national playets even escaped the league citing silly excuses. We just want to bringthern out of this bad practice and only then our cricket will go ahead as per our expectation," heobserved.

Meanwhile, cricket committee will take interview of some local physiotherapists for the six divisional teams.