The BCCI officials carried out a meeting on Saturday (March 17) to discuss the various venues for India’s home matches in the forthcoming season. Following the meeting, the BCCI acting Secretary Amitabh Choudhary stated that the meeting was held to fix the venues and dates of India’s home series against West Indies and Australia later this year.
“Today’s meeting was essentially to fix venues and dates for India’s home series beginning with West Indies and concluding with Australia. The venues for the matches with West Indies and Australia were also decided,” Amitabh Choudhary was quoted by ANI as saying.
The BCCI acting Secretary further went on to say that the prospect of day-night Test cricket in India was also considered in the meeting, but the eventual decision concerning it will be taken after getting the approval from Supreme Court appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA).
“The committee considered the proposal of converting 1 of the 2 Test matches into a day-night Test match. We considered the viewpoint of all the stakeholders and the view was unanimous on favoring this experiment,” Choudhary said.
“However, the decision was not taken today. The only decision taken today was to send recommendations to the COA. The day-night Test match will happen only when CoA approves,” he added.
While taking a decision to host day-night Test against West Indies last month, Amitabh Choudhary had consulted India’s head coach Ravi Shastri, BCCI CEO Rahul Johri, the acting President CK Khanna, treasurer Anirudh Chaudhary, ex-India wicketkeeper Saba Karim and operations manager Gaurav Saxena. However, he somehow kept the CoA members out of it. And that didn’t go down well with CoA chief Vinod Rai, who had lambasted the board members in his mail.
“You seem to have discussed with all the stakeholders, who in your scheme of things constitute four persons sitting in the (BCCI) cricket centre — a very misplaced viewpoint. Even if it be cricket of which all of you certainly have greater knowledge than me, (I’m excluding Diana (Edulji, former India women’s team skipper), who has greater knowledge than all of you! I represent the viewing population. They are your greatest stakeholder,” Rai had written in his mail in February 2018.
