The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has officially inaugurated the ‘Domestic 3’ (D3) Trophy, a franchise-based competition designed to integrate three formats under a single team identity. Starting in December 2026, the D3 Trophy will replace several existing domestic tournaments, consolidating first-class, List A, and T20 cricket into a unified structure.
The new format assigns six corporate franchises three-year ownership rights. Each entity will manage a team across all three cricket formats. The identified owners include Walton Group, ACME Laboratories, ACE Blue Star, Citizens Bank, Seven Rings Cement, and Fortune Group. Following a lottery, the BCB assigned icon players to these franchises: Mehidy Hasan Miraz (Walton), Towhid Hridoy (Fortune), Mushfiqur Rahim (Seven Rings), Nurul Hasan Sohan (ACE), Mosaddek Hossain (ACME), and Mohammad Naim (Citizens).
BCB President Tamim Iqbal confirmed the consolidation of the domestic calendar under this banner. “The T20 format, one-day format and four-day format will all be under one tournament. This is going to replace the NCL T20, BCL four-day and BCL one-day competitions,” Tamim said.
While the D3 Trophy replaces the franchise-based Bangladesh Cricket League (BCL) and the NCL T20, the traditional regional National Cricket League (NCL) four-day competition will remain a separate entity to preserve the traditional first-class pathway.
The tournament is scheduled to begin with the T20 phase on December 15, 2026. The four-day leg is slated for January 2027, followed by the one-day phase in May 2027. Preparations for the inaugural season include a Management Draft on September 29, 2026, and a Players’ Auction on October 26, 2026.
The launch includes an overlap between board governance and franchise ownership. Three BCB directors hold stakes in the competing teams: Fahim Sinha (ACME), Mizanur Rahman (Fortune), and Shahniyan Tanim (ACE). This structure places these directors in a position of regulating the same franchises they own.
