India v England ODI at Cuttack insured by OCA for Rs. 21 crore

The One-Day international to be played between India and England at Cuttack has been insured by the Odisha Cricket Association for approximately 21.79 crores. The association had already paid the premium of Rs. 13 Lakh to obtain the insurance policy from the National Insurance Company. Courtesy of the insurance policy, the Barbati Stadium in Cuttack can successfully host the ODI on the 19th of January.

Asirbad Behra, the secretary of the OCA has also gone on to state that even the furniture, as well as the infrastructure of the stadium, has been insured. The policy covers a terrorist attack, cancellation of the match due to fire as well as cover for natural causes such as rain and earthquakes. The spectators also have been insured of injury and the full monty includes the fact that the entire stadium has been insured.

“The amount of the insurance policy has increased as this time we have insured all our furniture and infrastructure of the stadium also,” said Asirbad Behera, OCA’s secretary.

“The India-Australia match in 2013 was washed out. Luckily, we had insured the match as a result of which our losses were minimized to great extent. Since then we have been religiously insuring all international matches hosted at Barabati,” said an OCA official.

The Barbati Stadium at Cuttack has seen its fair share of critics in the past especially when they hosted South Africa in October 2015. The spectators had hurled water bottles at the players and on the pitch thereby disrupting the match. However, OCA has made elaborate arrangements to avoid a rerun of the incident. All the seven galleries will be covered with nets completely this time.

In a bid to avoid the duplicity of tickets sold, the OCA has also numbered the seats in the stadium. The capacity of the same comes up to 43,000 which is also the capacity of the stadium.