Hyderabad/Chennai/Mumbai, Feb. 13: The blast in Pune on Saturday night may have reminded BCCI and its offspring IPL not to play politics in sport. There are signs already that the BCCI would like to distance itself from Mr Lalit Modi’s decision to move the
IPL-3 opening ceremony and all home matches of the Deccan Chargers out of Hyderabad and Visakha-patnam to Mumbai and Nagpur.
The decision to shift was not conveyed in a letter to the government or the IPL team or even as a press statement. Instead, on the hallowed pages of Twitter, Mr Modi wrote that Mumbai’s D.Y. Patil Stadium will host the tournament opener on March 12. The next three games — on March 19, 21 and 28 — will be played in Nagpur. The teams will be back at the Patil Stadium for the final three games on April 5, 10 and 12. Word was also out on Twitter that the BCCI was not in agreement with the Modi-(Sharad) Pawar decision.
The unstated reason for the shift is the threat of disruption of matches by pro-Telangana activists. The IPL Governing Council — it is not clear who were present at the meeting which took the decision to shift the matches out of AP — has ignored the assurances of security provided by the government and the police and promises by the pro-Telangana protesters that the matches will not be affected. It was perhaps for the first time that the government had promised security for a private event and protesters promised not to touch an event.
Even on Saturday, Andhra chief minister K. Rosaiah and state sports minister Komatireddy Venkatareddy spoke to Mr Pawar and demanded that the matches be returned to the Chargers’ home turf.
Mr Pawar had questions regarding the situation in the state and Saturday’s bandh. He was assured that things were normal and peaceful.
When Mr Pawar asked Mr Rosaiah whether it would be possible to play some matches in Visakhapatnam, the latter told him that it would be improper to favour only Visakhapat-nam.
"It is unbecoming on the part of the Governing Council to shift the matches," he said. Mr Rosaiah told Mr Pawar: "If you cannot hold matches here, it is an insult to my government and to the pride of my state." Mr Pawar quickly assured him that it was a question of national pride since international players were involved.
As against the assurances from the chief minister and the Telangana protagonists, neither the Shiv Sena nor the Maharashtra government is ready to make any promises. The Shiv Sena is still noncommittal about allowing the Australians to play even after Mr Pawar’s efforts to broker peace with them.
Sena leader Sanjay Raut said, "Our party chief Balasaheb (Thackeray) has not taken any decision on whether to allow the Australian players to play in Maharashtra." He also clarified that no commitment was given to Mr Pawar.
Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan said he cannot say anything about the IPL’s security "at this moment".
"The government can make a commitment about the security for IPL matches only after properly assessing the situation," he said.
It is also important to note that while the Congress was going all out against the Sena in the past two weeks, the party feels that it did not get the desired support from coalition partner NCP. Congress leaders, including Mr Chavan and Maharashtra Congress president Manikrao Thakre, have publicly expressed their unhappiness over Mr Pawar’s meeting with Mr Thackeray.
There is no predicting what will happen now in cricket, say veteran administrators who are convinced that the whole scenario has changed with the latest incident. They aver that to target Andhra, Hyderabad and Deccan Chargers was a bad move. What made it even worse was that the IPL management seemed to think that Maharashtra was a safe haven especially for the Chargers, who are led by an Aussie in Adam Gilchrist and whose second most prominent player is another Aussie, Andrew Symonds.
Considering that large police presence was needed to get My Name is Khan exhibited at multiplexes in Mumbai, the scene is hazy now with security threats hanging over the country.
Age Correspondents