Taijul becomes first Bangladeshi to earn SA20 contract

Taijul Islam has made a bit of history. The left-arm spinner is the first Bangladeshi to be signed by a team in South Africa’s franchise competition, the SA20.

Durban Super Giants bought him at Tuesday’s auction for 500,000 rand — about Tk 34.9 lakh. It means, if the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) grants him an NOC, Taijul will finally get to play a foreign league outside the BPL.

It wasn’t a great day for the rest of the Bangladesh names. Twenty-three had registered, 14 made the final shortlist. Only Taijul was picked.

Mustafizur Rahman’s name came up, but no team raised a paddle. Shakib Al Hasan and Litton Das weren’t even in the final pool. Mahmudullah Riyad, once a fixture in these lists, was cut before the auction.

The scale of the auction was massive: 782 players put their names in, 541 went under the hammer, 84 got contracts. South Africa’s Dewald Brevis was the headline buy, snapped up by Pretoria Capitals for 16.5 million rand. Aiden Markram went for 14 million to Durban. National captain Temba Bavuma, though, was ignored for a second straight year.

For Taijul, who built his reputation in Test cricket, this is a different challenge. He may not have the profile of a Shakib or a Mustafizur, but he’s now the one carrying Bangladesh’s flag into the SA20.