Crucket

Could Heath Mills be the toughest man in cricket? I haven’t really heard of anyone else standing up to the BCCI, so I am really interested in what comes of Heath Mills insistence that the ICL players will not be forced to step aside to accommodate the Indian test players looking for a bit of practice by playing in the State Championship.

The situation is as follows: as part of the agreement to add more international matches to the tour, and thereby dropping the only scheduled warm up match, six of the Indian players, those selected for the tests but not for the limited over matches, would be allowed to play a game in the State Championship for one of the New Zealand domestic teams. However, the precedent set by withdrawing Tendulkar and Karthik from the exhibition 20-20 in Wellington has raised the problem of the fact that Canterbury, Northern Districts and Auckland all have ICL players who may play in the games that the Indians are supposed to be playing in, risking spreading their ICL cooties to the pure, innocent Indians, either as team mates or opposition. If the ICL players play, then the BCCI must withdraw their players, who will then miss their only decent warm up opportunity.

Obviously the BCCI would prefer that the ICL players be dropped (and the changing rooms fumigated). And not doubt NZC will prefer that option too. But the NZ Cricket Players’ Association is insisting, quite reasonably, that India should not be allowed to dictate who gets selected for NZ domestic teams.

No doubt there will be some contractual procedure for NZC to withdraw the ICL players, to satisfy the BCCI, and probably get the NZCPA to all in line as well. However, it is quite delicious to see the BCCI cause so much trouble for themselves by their own childishness.