After the brawl, the hangover
England’s Kevin Pietersen (left) and skipper Paul Collingwood on arrival at Gatwick Airport in England on Tuesday after winning
The crackdown has begun, and the cricket board’s unprecedented move to issue showcause notices to the erring Indian players, as it turns out, is only the first step.
On Tuesday, the Indian cricket control board asked six Indian players — Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Rohit Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja — to explain why action should not be taken against them for their alleged pub brawl during the World Twenty20 championships in the Caribbean last week.
The players have been given seven days to respond to the notice. However, their replies will not just be used to determine their level of involvement in the altercation, but also be put to use and formulate a new code of conduct for touring players.
According to board sources, the incident has royally ticked off Board of Control of Cricket in India president Shashank Manohar. “The BCCI president is appalled at the players’ behaviour and wants a new set of guidelines drawn up that will deal with the players need to conduct themselves on overseas tours,” a board official told this newspaper on Tuesday.
Board secretary N. Srinivasan shot off the notices to the six on Tuesday afternoon at the behest of Manohar, but denied that it was part of the larger scheme of things.
“It’s not a court martial, the board just wants to hear the players’ side of the story,” Srinivasan said. “What the board is doing is the fallout of the report of team manager Ranjib Biswal.
“The board has also conducted its own investigations into the incident.”
The players’ movement has already been restricted to a bare minimum of late with “security concerns” having had a telling effect. Every member of the squad on tour is supposed to inform of their whereabouts and immediate travel plans to team manager and local security in-charge.
In fact, the pub brawl that took place on May 11 at St. Lucia was only after the players were relieved of that code and allowed to go out. Just hours after India were eliminated from the T20 World Championships — losing their last Super Eight encounter to Sri Lanka — it is believed that a clutch of players went to local nightclub where they got into an argument with the Indian fans. The situation escalated from there, resulting in a brawl.
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Modi gets 10 more days for 2nd notice
Mumbai, May 18: Lalit Modi got a breather after the Cricket Board on Tuesday granted the suspended IPL commissioner 10 additional days to reply to the second showcause notice issued to him for his acts “detrimental to world cricket”.
Modi was issued the notice on May 6 on the basis of an e-mail received from England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke and has now time till May 31 to reply to the second notice following his request to the board, according to Modi’s legal advisor Mehmood Abdi. — PTI
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