BCCI’s Ego Responsible for Crisis Facing T20 World Cup; ICC is Damaged

5 months ago 57

BCCI's ego responsible for crisis facing T20 World Cup; ICC is damaged: Sharda Ugra, to Karan Thapar for The Wire. ......................................... Sharda Ugra, who is widely considered India’s foremost sports journalist, says the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s ego is responsible for the potential crisis facing the T20 World Cup due to start on the 7th of February. As she put it: “The ICC is basically just the Dubai office of the BCCI”. The crisis facing the T20 World Cup emerges out of Pakistan’s threat to boycott this event. Mohsin Naqvi, the Head of the Pakistan Cricket Board and the country’s Interior Minister, has indicated that Pakistan will decide about its participation on Friday or, even, as late as Monday. Sharda Ugra says the ICC has mishandled the present crisis, which began with Bangladesh’s demand that its matches be held in Colombo rather than Kolkata and Mumbai but, actually, goes all the way back to BCCI’s instructions to Kolkata Knight Riders to drop Mustafizur Rahman from their team. She says without Pakistani participation (if that happens) the T20 World Cup would be damaged and its credibility is “out of the window”. She adds that the ICC’s credibility is “at the moment at a pretty low ebb”. To help you get a sense of the issues covered by this interview I give below the main questions put to Sharda Ugra. Here they are: 1) If Pakistan carries out its threat to boycott next month’s T20 World Cup how much damage will that do to the World Cup? And how much of the event’s credibility will be lost? 2) Who is responsible for bringing us to this position where twelve days before the World Cup starts Pakistan is threatening to withdraw? Who’s to blame for this? 3) Pakistan versus India matches are the highpoint of all ICC fixtures and they earn a lot of revenue for the ICC. Now if Pakistan boycotts the World Cup will the ICC suffer a significant loss? 4) Has the ICC mishandled the situation and created a potential crisis? 5) If India and Pakistan can refuse to play in each other’s country and the ICC accommodates them by holding their matches in a third country why can’t Bangladesh after the Mustafizur Rahman incident be similarly accommodated? 6) Tell me if Australia and England had insisted they will not play in India would the ICC have taken the same rigid stand or do they have leverage which Bangladesh does not? 7) This problem, I presume, goes all the way back to BCCI instructing Kolkata Knight Riders to dispense with the Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman. Was that a terrible mistake that has directly led to the present crisis? 8) Let me ask upfront the question that lies beneath the surface of our discussion. The Chairman of the ICC is Jay Shah, who is a former Secretary of the BCCI and Home Minister Amit Shah’s son. Many people believe that the treatment of Bangladesh by ICC is happening at the behest of the Indian government. Do you share that belief? 9) They say sports and politics should never be mixed. Isn’t that exactly what’s happening in the case of Bangladesh and the T20 World Cup? Join The Wire's Youtube Membership and get exclusive content, member-only emojis, live interaction with The Wire's founders, editors and reporters and much more. Memberships to The Wire Crew start at Rs 89/month. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChWtJey46brNr7qHQpN6KLQ/join

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