ICC technical committee has decided to give full 6 points to Pakistan when BCCI canceled the proposed series against Pakistan. BCCI has also failed to provide a suitable reason to cancel the series.
The Bilateral series are the part of the ICC Women Championship where each nation has to play against each other in a round-robin format and first four teams from the championship would get a direct entry to the next year’s world cup. While the remaining teams have to fight for the last four spots in ’17 world cup with other associate nations. Indian and Pakistan have been scheduled to play against each other in the 6th round of the championship in Pakistan between August and October. But in such hostile political atmosphere and relationship between these two countries, ample requests from PCB was turned down by BCCI and the series was canceled. Though PCB informed that they are ready to play at a neutral venue like UAE but BCCI was not ready for that.
BCCI president Anurag Thakur stated that in such hostile condition India was not prepared to play any match against Pakistan and as the BCCI have to keep the security matters of the players in mind they can’t allow Women cricketers to go to Pakistan without the consent of the Indian Government. But they didn’t say anything about the neutral venue.
Indian women Team were in the 5th place with 19 points under their belt after whitewashing West Indies (3-0) last week.
And as ICC has decided to give all the six points to Pakistan that means India’s hope for direct qualification has shattered and they remain in 5th place while west indies have sailed through to the ’17 world cup.
After the verdict one of BCCI’s official said that they will appeal against the verdict as “women team has been made soft target by ICC” and threatened ICC that if the verdict prevailed they will not play against Pakistan men team in upcoming Champions Trophy.
Here lies a question. Was BCCI not aware of the fact that if they cancel a series Women team will suffer the most? Was BCCI not aware of the fact that if they cancel the series ICC could take a strong step against them? Or they were well aware of that but didn’t take into the consideration the repercussions of their decision? When In such political condition Pakistan and India can play final hockey in South Asian Championship there should not be any problem playing a cricket series which is important for both the team. It will be interesting to see what steps BCCI will take if the same situation arises someday for the men’s team as happened for their female counterpart.
Such wrong steps, after all, hampers the cricketing culture and the spirit of the cricket. Sports are meant to create an atmosphere where every nation will come and say their words. Even in the ancient time, Olympic was started to spread the spirit of unity and friendliness for the few days in the sporting arena. Last but not the least, in point of view what happened to Indian women cricket yesterday is more of a result of the ignorance of BCCI towards women cricket rather than “soft victim by ICC”.
