Last week member-secretary of the committee Rafiqul Islam said that it was necessary to halt the country's lone first-class competition from January 1 to mid-February to allow the preparation of pitches for the ICC Under-19 World Cup that begins at 21 grounds including eight venues on February 15.

But now it appears the League will run its course if the Board gets the curators they asked for from abroad.

Desperately looking to increase the manpower on the ground, BCB president Ali Asghar and chairman of the grounds committee Shafiqur Rahman Munna went to India to hire some experts.

Asghar also discussed the issue with his Indian counterpart Jagmohan Dalmiya. But the BCB boss, who had a more important agenda of confirming India's scheduled tour of Bangladesh in April next year, didn't reveal anything after returning home yesterday.

However, Munna spoke at length about the attempt to obtain the expertise of five curators from Kolkata.

"We had a cordial discussion with Dalmiya and he assured us of providing a few curators once their domestic duties were complete," said the ground committee chief.

But Dalmiya, who is also the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, regretted that it wasn't possible to entertain the request for the moment.

Munna, however, remained optimistic that at least three ground experts would arrive in the country by January 10.

"We are trying to get five experts so that they can make up for the shortage of available manpower to make the World Youth Cup a success as well as to provide adequate staff to continue the domestic cricket simultaneously," he added.

However, his member-secretary Rafiq was rather unhappy having to wait for the arrival of additional manpower. He thought it would hamper their task.

"We are already behind schedule and it is not humanly possible for us to keep things rolling unless we get the additional staff immediately. Had we got the extra hands right we could've easily maintained our routine of National League," grumbled Rafique.

The under-pressure ground committee secretary said that he would meet with officials of both the tournament committee and the CCDM (Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis) to find a formula for an uninterrupted domestic calendar.

Meanwhile, tournament committee chairman Shah Nurul Kabir Shaheen said that whatever has been said by the grounds committee they were determined to go ahead with the National League according to the fixture.

"My job is to organize tournaments and it's their duty to have the grounds in shape. I will talk to the BCB president to fix this problem," said Shaheen, who is also an advisor to Ashgar.

The CCDM chairman Khondoker Jamil Uddin outlined his plan to start the Premier Division Cricket League by April 3.

He however said that the glamorous one-day competition involving the top ten Dhaka club would be played on single league basis this year.

"Most of the clubs have agreed to the proposed April 3 start. Besides, the top clubs also prepared to play if the League is single league instead of two-day competition which was the case last year," Jamil.