England Test vice-captain Ollie Pope has said that the team management hopes that spinner Rehan Ahmed’s visa issue will be sorted. Notably, as the England contingent returned from Abu Dhabi after their break, Ahmed was stopped at Rajkot airport for having a single-entry visa.
The local immigration authorities managed to give the 19-year-old an interim two-day visa to facilitate his entry, and Pope was optimistic that the entire episode would come to an end sooner than later.
“Hopefully it (Ahmed’s visa issue) will be sorted in a day or so,” said Pope while addressing a press conference here on Tuesday.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) said in a statement on Tuesday that the Indian authorities had found some discrepancies in Ahmed’s paperwork and that they were working towards resolving it.
“We were advised, on returning to India, that there was a paperwork discrepancy with Rehan Ahmed’s visa. The local authorities at Rajkot Airport were supportive, enabling Rehan’s entry on a temporary visa. The correct visa should be processed and issued in the coming days. He will continue to prepare with the rest of the squad ahead of the third Test,” the ECB statement said.
On the other hand, pacer Ollie Robinson revealed his visa issues while traveling to India, but blamed the ECB for the error.
The right-arm pacer said he only received his visa on the morning of England's team Hyderabad-bound flight from Abu Dhabi before the first Test. It got delayed because of a "missing initial" in the visa documents.
"He (Wayne Bentley, England's manager) said, 'your visa has been denied' or something. There was an error at the ECB - I think they must have just put an initial wrong, or one letter must have been wrong. It didn't pass. He was like, 'you're not coming to India - you have to stay here for another night… it could be two nights, could be three nights, don't know how long it's going to take.' Luckily, I woke up in the morning to a nice message from Wayne saying 'visa's here,” Robinson said on the Chatting Balls podcast.
Robinson hasn't featured in the first two Tests as England decided to field only one seamer in each of those Tests.
The Test series is level 1-1 with the third Test to be played in Rajkot from February 15 onwards.
(PTI inputs)
