Capital shame for DDCA: India-Lanka T20 tie shifted from Delhi to Ranchi

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Qaiser Mohammad Ali

@AlwaysCricket

The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) on Friday copped capital shame as the BCCI shifted next month’s India-Sri Lanka T20 International match from Delhi to Ranchi as the association failed miserably to secure the required permissions from various local agencies like the municipal body.

Now, the all 10 men’s and women’s matches of the ICC WorldTwenty20 in March are in grave danger of being relocated too. BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur on Friday gave the DDCA just two days, till 31 January, to secure all permissions from government agencies, failing which all matches would be shifted.

“As far as the World T20 is concerned, we have given DDCA a deadline till January 31 to procure all the necessary NOCs failing which the seven allotted matches will be shifted to other venues with each of them getting a match,” Thakur told reporters. “I have told them to provide us with all the permissions in writing. If they don’t come with NOC [No Objection Certificates] by 5 pm on January 31st, matches will be shifted.”

With Saturday and Sunday being the next days, it looks highly improbable that the DDCA would be able to secure all the required permissions for the ICC WorldTwenty20 matches.

DDCA, which has a long tradition of mismanagement, now faces huge criticism as some of its office-bearers had tried to mislead the BCCI, telling the governing body that it had got all permissions for the World T20.

Now, after this ‘lie’ got exposed by the BCCI, Chetan Chauhan, who is supposed to be ‘working president’ of the DDCA presently, on Friday tried to cover up the blatant bid to mislead the BCCI.

“I know he [DDCA Patron Manjeet Singh] said DDCA is ready but I do not think he mentioned about having the compliance certificates. If he has said so and it is there in the BCCI minutes of the meeting, we will surely pull him up,” Chauhan was quoted as saying in media reports.

Given the constantly fluid equations at the DDCA, it remains to be seen who would have the courage to “pull up” the Patron.

For the record, Manjeet had informed BCCI officials when he went to attend a meeting of the Programme and Fixtures Committee recently in Mumbai.

Former India Test player Kirti Azad termed the relocation of the T20 match a ‘shame’.

“This has been the DCCA’s practice for the last 16 years that they would go to the court at the last minute. They give half-baked information and then shoot from the shoulders of Hon’ble Delhi High Court. And they have bene doing this for a very long time,” Kirti Azad told www.jantakareporter.com.

“It’s not an embarrassment; it’s a shame. They are shameless creatures,” Azad, who captained DDCA to the Ranji Trophy title in 1991-92, said. “By going to the court they thought ‘yeh hamari bapauti hai’ (getting permission through courts was a given). That is the worst part. How come they are surviving and are not in jail? That’s a big question.”

The DDCA last month sued Kirti Azad for Rs 2.5 crore for making “defamatory statements” against the association in public.

On Thursday, Kirti Azad announced that he too would be suing the DDCA next week. It is possible that he would add the incident of relocating of the India-Sri Lanka T20 match, which shows DDCA in poor light, as it might add muscle to his argument that mismanagement is still rife at the association.

Kirti Azad, however, said his petition is an attempt to prevent matches being shifted from the Delhi in future.

Revised itinerary of India-Sri Lanka T20 series:

1st T20I (Feb 9 at Pune), 2nd T20I (Feb 12 at Ranchi) and 3rd T20I (Feb 14 at Visakhapatnam)

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