The Board of Control for Cricket in India has informed the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) that there will be no changes in the ICC ODI World Cup 2023 schedule. The HCA requested the cricket board to tweak the schedule as the local police authorities expressed their reservations about deploying adequate personnel on back-to-back match days. However, the BCCI has turned down the appeal as they already made some changes to the schedule recently.
According to a report on PTI, the HCA officials met BCCI secretary Jay Shah in Delhi, who was present in the capital city for the Asia Cup team selection meeting.
“BCCI secretary Jay Shah held a meeting with HCA officials in Delhi after the Asia Cup team selection meeting (for which the secretary is convenor) and the state unit was categorically told that no changes would be entertained after a revised schedule was issued on August 9,” a BCCI source informed.
The BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla had already indicated on Sunday that “changes (to the schedule) were unlikely.” The World Cup schedule, which was first released on June 27 in Mumbai amidst fanfare, went through a lot of changes with dates and timings of as many as nine games, including the marquee India vs Pakistan clash.
Earlier, the marquee India vs Pakistan which was originally scheduled for October 15 was shifted to October 24. The BCCI was forced to make the change as October 15 was the first day of Navratri which sees Garba nights being organised across Gujarat attracting a massive crowd.
The preponement of the IND vs PAK clash forced ICC to make few more changes in the schedule.
This particular change in schedule led to Pakistan’s game against Sri Lanka in Hyderabad being advanced by a day from October 11 to 10. Hyderabad was also hosting Netherlands’ game against New Zealand on October 9.
Hence, the local police officials had asked for at least a day’s gap between the two games.
However, that would have meant slotting the New Zealand vs Netherlands game on October 8. It would have put a lot of stress on the teams and both the countries wouldn’t have agreed upon.
New Zealand are playing England in the opening game on October 5 in Ahmedabad and the next day they will fly to Hyderabad and would have received only one training session (on October 7) in that case.
Netherlands open their campaign against Pakistan on October 6 in Hyderabad and advancement by a day meant that October 7 would go in recovery and next day they would be playing again.
Neither ICC nor the two boards (NZC and Netherlands authority known as KNCB) would have agreed to this request.
(With PTI Inputs)
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