Amazing how BCCI is treating Olympic Association of their own country!
BCCI may not send team for South Asian Games
The Indian Olympic Association's ambition to send a cricket team to take part in a Twenty20 tournament that is part of the South Asian Games is set to go unfulfilled as the Board of Control for Cricket in India has no interest in pursuing the matter.
The South Asian Games will be held in Dhaka from January 29 to February 9, 2010.
“There is no proposal to send a team to the South Asian Games,” N Srinivasan, secretary of the BCCI told the Hindustan Times.
The BCCI, incidentally, had not replied to a proposal to send a team even to the Asian Games in Guangzhou next year.
In 1998, a second-string team was sent to the Commonwealth Games and performed well below expectations, even as several key players took part in a series against Pakistan in Toronto.
Randhir Singh, secretary general of the Indian Olympic Association, first wrote to Srinivasan on September 23 this year and received no response.
Following this, PM Narayanan of the IOA has sent several reminders, via email and fax, none of which have been replied to.
“Once we were notified that cricket was included, we had written to the BCCI,” Randhir Singh told Hindustan Times. “We are still awaiting a response.”
As per regulations, the team for the South Asian Games would have to comprise players who were under the age of 21 as on January 28, 2010.
However, India’s best young cricketers will be busy at the time, defending their under-19 title at the World Cup in New Zealand in January 2010.