Hosts prepare for matches against Australia without official announcement from BCCI

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has not yet finalized the venues for the 5 ODI and 3T20I series against Australia which is scheduled to start in October. The Cricket Board have only made the tentative schedule and the respective venues have started preparing for the upcoming events, without the formal statement.

According to the tentative schedule, announced on the second of August, Chennai, Kolkata, Nagpur, Bengaluru, and Indore would host the One Day match. The Board has not yet displayed the venues in its website yet. Some of the associations are yet to receive letters while the others are yet to receive them.

Such notices usually are provided well in advance but due to the existing turmoil at the top sphere of the Board, such decisions are getting delayed. Many of the calls to Ratnakar Shetty and Diana Edulji regarding the matter have gone unanswered. But the according to some officials, the State associations are capable enough to host the matches efficiently, and there are no reasons to alarmed.

VCA appealed to reschedule

“We are still to get an official confirmation. Going by the tentative schedule, we were supposed to host a T20 match against Australia on October 13. We are making arrangements according to that,” quoted the Hyderabad Cricket Association president G Vivekanand according to The New Indian Express. “We had requested that the match allotted to us be rescheduled to September 28. It has been accepted,” claimed Vidarbha Cricket Association president Anand Jaiswal.

“With court matters taking up a lot of time and lack of clarity over who actually heads BCCI, these things are not functioning the way they should. But that shouldn’t be a problem because most of the associations are experienced in hosting matches of such scale,” said an anonymous official of a hosting association.