Did BCCI favour Dharamsala and Nagpur as venues for World T20 matches

2:39 AM Rajsamand Blog 0 Comments

New Delhi: There can be little doubt that Shashank Manohar and Anurag Thakur are two most powerful persons in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), but one can also smell a rat when he goes through the list of venues for upcoming World T20 matches in India.

It's surprising that only two venues have got 17 out of 35 matches. It becomes even more surprising when these two venues happen to be Nagpur and Dharamsala, which are grounds of respective state associations, headed by Manohar and Thakur.

While Nagpur, the home association of Manohar, is set to host nine T20 games, Dharamshala, home of Thakur-run Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association, will stage eight.

There couldn't have been more surprise in store that the pricey India-Pakistan clash has also gone to Dharamsala, which has a stadium of mere 23,000 capacity.

Traditional Test and ODI venues, however, seem to be backbenchers in right to host World T20 matches. Among a total of seven venues for World T20, five other will host the other half of the tournament. Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Delhi will host a total of 18 matches, including the final at Kolkata's Eden Gardens.

The tournament is scheduled to be held between March 8-April 3.

There are 20 international cricket stadiums in the country, of which 15 are certified Test venues. However, the BCCI decided to finalise only these seven venues to host the World T20 matches. The Board's decision to give India-Pakistan clash to Dharamsala raises eyebrows for certain reasons, as stadiums who have capacity as high as 55,000 were ignored in front of a stadium which doesn't have even half of others' capacity.

"It is not even in rotation that Dharamshala has been awarded the game," a senior board functionary was quoted as saying by the Times of India. He added, "If you had a choice between 23,000 people watching India play Pakistan and 40,000 or 50,000 people watching, which option would you choose?" Clearly, outside of Maharashtra, where political parties raise strong objections to host Pakistan, there are several venues that could have been considered for this big-ticket game."

The Board's favouritism becomes even more evident by the fact that just a month ago, it had added six new venues to its list of certified Test centres. Of those six, only Dharamshala has been given eight World T20 games, while other five - Pune, Rajkot, Indore, Ranchi and Visakhapatnam - didn't get even a single match.

Some other traditional centres like Chennai, which belongs to former BCCI president N. Srinivasan - have also been ignored. Chennai will host only four women's World T20 matches instead of the expected big-draw men's encounters.

Officials from the grounds and pitches committee were also contacted to ascertain if there were particular reasons why so many possible venues were ignored. "Not that I know of," a senior committee member said was also quoted as saying by the Times of India. Two state association presidents also pleaded ignorance on why their venues, recently upgraded to Test centres, were not considered.
"The International Cricket Council will pay the BCCI Rs55.2 crore to host the entire men's World T20, which works out to Rs 1.6 crore per match for 35 matches. It is understood that the BCCI will pay the hosting association the gate money for each game, which sources say is between to Rs 2-3 cr per match depending on the capacity and ticket sales. Even for a venue with minimum seating capacity, hosting eight matches would mean earning a little more than Rs 8 crore from the board," the report said.

Though their are hush hush voices within Board about indifferent attitude for allocation of matches, there are not many who spoke against Board's bigwigs.

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