Walton Stacked with Stars at D-3 Trophy Auction: Taskin Signed for 21 Million Points as Franchise Builds Title-Chasing Squad

After a long eight-hour auction, the six franchises have built their squads for the BCB’s new D-3 Trophy. No side held back in the race to sign national-team stars, but Walton has drawn extra attention by bringing in Liton Das, Taskin Ahmed and Muminul Haque. The franchise has also drafted young cricketers alongside the experienced names, trying overall to build a balanced squad aimed at the title.

The D-3 Trophy is the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s (BCB) new competition, designed to bring the three formats of domestic cricket under one umbrella.

The player auction began at 10am on Monday (26 October) at a five-star hotel in the capital. Conducted by experienced Indian presenter and auctioneer Charu Sharma, it featured 269 cricketers. Each team picked 22 players from the auction; with one pre-designated icon cricketer, every one of the six squads now has 23 players.

Walton’s biggest signing at the auction was national-team pacer Taskin Ahmed, who cost 21 million points. The franchise also signed Liton Das for 15.5 million points and Muminul Haque for 8 million points. Walton’s icon cricketer is Mehedi Hasan Miraz. With Miraz and Liton both having captained the national team, there is interest in the side’s leadership plans around them.

Alongside the experienced players, Walton also drafted youngsters: Iqbal Hossain Emon for 6.6 million points, Ariful Islam for 6.2 million and Samiun Bashir Ratul for 5.4 million. The franchise also bought Nasum Ahmed for 6.9 million, Marshall Ayub for 3.6 million, Rony Talukdar for 3 million, and Habib ur Rahman Sohan and Rezaul Islam Raja for 3.2 million points.

Explaining the squad-building, Walton coach Abdur Razzak said the auction structure made signing star cricketers essential. He said: “The system itself was such that the first names on the list were all star players. So we had to take them; every team had to take them. That was the system. To me, every team has built its squad around stars. We were no exception to that.”

Amin Khan attended the auction as Walton’s representative. Expressing satisfaction with the squad, he said Walton would take the field aiming to win the title. Amin Khan said: “Everyone expects their team to win. I also expect the Walton team to win, of course. Given how the team has been formed today, the players who have been taken, and with our best coach with us, we hope we will play good cricket; we will definitely win.”

Although the squad includes cricketers with national-team captaincy experience such as Miraz and Liton, Walton has not yet finalised a specific captain. Abdur Razzak said on the matter: “Whoever is needed at the time will be the captain in our team. We have no particular plan on this yet.”

Former national cricketer Abdur Razzak also spoke about his new path in coaching. Saying he enjoys working as a coach, he said: “Working as a coach is a joy for me. You get to stay within cricket, stay close to the field all the time, stay with the players; I enjoy that a lot, so far.” But Razzak values success in the job over personal enjoyment; in his words: “Now the bigger thing is to do the job well. Because it is not enough for me to just enjoy it; I will try to do the work well.”