Recognised By: THE PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA & PREMIER/GOVERNER & CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF VICTORIA Victoria's first Melbourne Monthly Newspaper since October 1993

Sports

07/06/10 | Return | Print |

Indian Cricket thinks only of money

Indian cricket became the victim of political slanging when BCCI refused top send a team to the Asian Games later this year. The sixteenth edition of the Asian Games are to be held in Guangzhou, China, later this year and will be the first to feature cricket among its various disciplines, albeit in the Twenty20 format. The Congress MP from Pune, Suresh Kalmadi took pot-shots at NCP president Sharad Pawar, without naming him and the Board of Control for Cricket in India for not sending a team to the Asian Games. Kalmadi said, “The BCCI has conveyed its decision of not sending Team India for the Asian Games. This was expected of the BCCI. Yeh to hona hi tha.

“Cricket in India is commercialised and since there is no big prize money involved, I am not surprised at all at the BCCI’s decision,” Kalmadi said. Referring to the last Commonwealth Games held in Malaysia, Kalmadi said, “The BCCI had sent a B-team to Malaysia.

It is better not to send a team, rather than to send a B-team.”

Kalmadi, who is the president of the Indian Olympic Association, shares a bitter relationship with Pawar, especially after the 2007 Pune Municipal Corporation polls. During these elections, Pawar had appealed to the citizens of Pune to oust the Kalmadi-led Congress from the corporation. The NCP had gone to the extent of joining hands with the Shiv Sena to keep Kalmadi and the Congress at bay in the PMC.

The Commonwealth Games in October are set to compete against India's obsession with cricket if a high-profile home series against Australia goes ahead as scheduled. Ricky Ponting's men are due to tour India in September-October at the same time the Commonwealth Games take place in New Delhi from October 3 to 14. A BCCI official said details of the tour, which is part of the ICC's Future Tours Program, were being worked out with Cricket Australia. “We have requested Australia to play two Tests and three one-day internationals instead of a series of seven one-dayers,” he said. Australia is due to arrive in late September and must return home by October 31, when it begins a home series against Sri Lanka.

The tour, once finalised, is certain to further annoy Indian Olympic officials, who are already seething at the BCCI's decision not to send the men's and women's cricket teams to the Asian Games in China in November. “The BCCI is not taking part because there is no money to be made at the Asian Games,” said IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi, who heads the Commonwealth Games organising committee. “They think only of money. I am glad cricket is not part of the Commonwealth Games.

Although New Delhi is unlikely to figure in Australia's itinerary, millions of television viewers will be glued to the cricket when the Games are on. Cricket has such a strong following in India that organisers of the field hockey World Cup in New Delhi in March advanced the tournament by a week so that it would not clash with the Indian Premier League.

Meanwhile Indian soccer captain Baichung Bhutia feels the BCCI should reconsider its stand of not sending the Indian cricket team for the upcoming Asian Games. Speaking on the sidelines of a function, Bhutia said India stood a good chance of winning a medal in this event. “The Indian board should reconsider its stand and send the best Indian team which will definitely win a medal,'' he told reporters. “India will have a fine chance of doing well as because there will be only two good sides in Pakistan and Sri Lanka,'' he said.