DPL's healthy lunch promise remains on paper

Before the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League (DPL) began this season, a bold and well-intentioned announcement was made by ad-hoc committee head Tamim Iqbal, that there would be no more careless, nutritionally hollow lunches for domestic cricketers.

It was a promising vision. Seven rounds into the tournament, however, the ground reality tells a completely different story.

Across every venue, through all seven rounds of the DPL, the same familiar spread has continued to appear at lunchtime — rice, lentil, meat, and the occasional fish. Grilled food, balanced nutrition, carefully planned menus: nowhere to be seen.

When contacted, a Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) official spoke openly about the situation, acknowledging that the promise had not translated into practice.

"Don't even mention it. They just aren't managing it the way they should," the official said with a tone of quiet frustration.

When asked where exactly the problem lies — whether it is the clubs or someone else — the official was clear. "It's not the clubs' problem. It's the vendor supplying the food," the official replied.

The BCB's logistics department appointed a new vendor this season to handle meal distribution across all match venues. But the official revealed that the vendor has been struggling to cope with the scale of the operation.

"I complain every single day. I told them to deliver food by 12 o'clock. Sometimes they deliver it early, around 10, and then in this heat it starts to smell. That was one complaint. And then there's the issue of chicken — they give chicken every single day, that's another complaint. Apart from that, there's not much else. The fish used to be small at the start, but now they give bigger pieces, so that's no longer a problem," the official said.

Despite the daily complaints, the vendor has been slow to fully adapt. The official explained that coordinating meals across six grounds simultaneously, while also providing food to match umpires, is a significant logistical challenge for a first-time operator.

"They're new, they can't manage it the way you'd want. Delivering food to six grounds at the same time — things go a little off here and there. And they have to feed the umpires as well. That's the problem," the official stated.

On the question of whether the menu itself has changed from the original plan, the official was candid. The promised transformation to grilled food and health-focused meals simply has not happened — and part of the reason, the official suggested, lies with the players themselves.

"Right now this is what they're giving, because the players eat rice at lunch. It's not like they'll eat roti or bread, you understand? We know they prefer rice. If I give them roti and grilled food, that'll start another round of complaints. But it is the players' preference," the official noted.

The official was careful not to blame the players entirely, framing the situation as a cultural reality that cannot be forced overnight. "Maybe someone wrote 'grilled' and forgot — because players will never eat grilled food. They'll eat rice. That's just the way it is," the official explained.

"There is a menu that we've set — vegetables are there, a sweet dish is there, the things we specified are being given. Fish is compulsory, and then either beef or chicken. But fully maintaining the standard, for some reason, they're not quite managing that. This is just the beginning. You start, then comes the ICU, the ambulance — things don't happen all at once. Maybe development will happen gradually," the official added.

But the broader transformation — the shift away from traditional rice-based meals toward scientifically planned nutrition — has effectively been deferred to next season. "Next year it will probably be much better. Nothing else to it," the official concluded.