MCA officials plan to take action against Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube for skipping Mumbai's match against Railways

The 2019-20 edition of India’s most prestigious domestic cricket tournament, Ranji Trophy is underway currently and in a surprising turn of events, the most dominant team in the tourney’s history, Mumbai succumbed to a 10-wicket defeat in their round 3 match against Railways. The top officials of the Mumbai Cricket Association feel that the lack of commitment from the new generation of players cost them the match.

Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube, two of Mumbai’s most talented cricketers, preferred to take some rest instead of turning up for the state in the fixture versus Railways. Both the players were a part of the Indian limited-overs squad that faced West Indies last week hence, they decided to relax ahead of the series against Sri Lanka. Interestingly, the man who the series for India with his whirlwind knock in the final ODI, Shardul Thakur showed up for Mumbai in their third-round match.

MCA Officials lash out on Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube

As per the top officials of the Mumbai Cricket Association, the selectors had not advised any rest to the duo hence, they do not know who told them to skip the game. Talking to TOI, a senior official of the association was quoted as follows.

“It’s an unfortunate episode for Mumbai cricket. They told us they had been ‘advised rest’ by the BCCI. However, when we checked with the selectors, we were told that there was no such instruction sent out from the selectors, at least. So who asked them to rest? The physio of the Indian team or the trainer? Or they did choose to rest themselves and fired from the Board’s shoulders? This is something, that no one in the MCA, including the selectors, has appreciated. This issue will surely be discussed in the next Apex Council meeting of the association. We may take some sort of action soon.”

Another MCA official gave the examples of players like Eknath Solkar and Sudhakar Adhikari who gave Mumbai cricket their first priority and did not even care about the other important things happening in their life. He mentioned that the current players just do not have the same kind of commitment towards their state team. It will be intriguing to see what’s next for the duo of Shreyas Iyer and Shivam Dube.

Freehit: 20 Questions with Zimbabwe all-rounder Sikandar Raza