It’s not cricket

Any move to bar Guwahati from staging international cricket matches should be opposed vehemently. Since the ODI fiasco last month, every other day newspapers are carrying reports about the impending ban on Guwahati as a host of cricket matches. Though till now nothing is official, the fact remains that a powerful lobby is indeed active to see that Guwahati does not figure anywhere in the international cricket map.

As the final decision is still awaited, it is so far not known on which ground cricket administrators are contemplating to suspend Guwahati as a venue. If behaviour of the crowd is the criterion, many others centres in the country would have ceased to host cricket matches long ago. As a matter of fact, two most prestigious cricketing centres of the country Kolkata and Mumbai carry the worst reputations in this regard. But these two centres never received any punishment from the International Cricket Council (ICC). There are other centres two in the country which are known as trouble-prone. But no one ever talked about taking any action against those centres. But in case of Guwahati, it seems, everyone has formed the opinion that what happened in Guwahati on that fateful day, never happened on a cricket field.

One does not know why Guwahati always remains in the bad book of the cricket administrators. Remember the city was deprived of a world cup match as a committee formed by BCCI was not satisfied with the arrangements. Moreover, often we have heard that foreign teams had refused to play in the city because of security scenario in the State. If India can play in Karachi, Dhaka or Chittagaon, why can’t Australia or England play in Guwahati? If security is the main concern, there should be no matches in London too. In recent times, the city has witnessed number of terrorist attacks.

Thus, instead of punishing Guwahati without any fault, ICC, BCCI and other cricket playing nations should go for a genuine introspection. BCCI should be blamed for its illogical rotation policy, ECB should be blamed for hyperactive attitude over security and ICC should be blamed for allowing the match to be staged at a place, where it rains during this time of the year.

Guwahati’s only fault was that the city was       too eager to host a cricket match. And to punish the  city for it’s over enthusiasm will ever remain as a black spot on the game. After all that’s not cricket.

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