The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday said that the six skippers of Indian Premier League franchise, including the Virat Kohli, R Ashwin, Gautam Gambhir, David Warner, Steve Smith and newly appointed Kolkata Knight Riders captain Dinesh Karthik do not need to attend the opening ceremony of cash-rich league.
Mumbai Indian’s captain Rohit Sharma and Chennai Super Kings’ king Mahendra Singh Dhoni are the only two IPL captains who will be present during the opening ceremony of the tournament.
It is learnt that all eight captains will do a special video shoot on April 6 and leave for their respective cities that very evening itself.
Till last year, the convention was to have an opening ceremony a day before the first match, which captains would attend and sign the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ pledge.
This year it was decided at the IPL Governing meeting that the opening ceremony would be held in Mumbai on April 7 before the first match between MI and CSK.
However, the goof-up happened because senior IPL officials didn’t do their homework on the logistical aspect of four other franchises which have matches next day.
On April 8, there is a doubleheader with Delhi Daredevils taking on Kings XI Punjab in Mohali at 4 pm while RCB will meet KKR in Kolkata at 8 pm.
“IPL team should have done their homework. They are calling Gautam Gambhir and Ravichandran Ashwin a day before an afternoon match. That’s absolute lack of homework,” a senior BCCI official told PTI.
“Sample this. If Ashwin and Gambhir would have attended the opening ceremony, they could only board a 9 pm flight from Mumbai to Delhi as there are no late evening flights from Mumbai to Chandigarh.
“Now from Delhi, they can’t take a flight to Chandigarh on Sunday morning because the airport would remain closed. So either they travel by car during the night, which is a dangerous proposition or in the morning of the match to play at 4 pm. The less said, better it is,” the senior official fumed.
Even Virat Kohli (RCB) and Dinesh Karthik (KKR) would have had to travel a day before the match although they have an evening game (8pm) to play.
When contacted, acting president CK Khanna said: “We are aware that there are some logistical issues that have cropped up. It will be sorted at the earliest. I think captains will be called a day earlier and their portion will be shot and shown during the opening ceremony.”
Here are the full squads of all the eight teams for IPL 2018:
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Sarfaraz Khan, Chris Woakes, Yuzvendra Singh Chahal, Umesh Yadav, Brendon McCullum, Washington Sundar, Navdeep Saini, Quinton De Kock, Mohammed Siraj, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Colin De Grandhomme, M. Ashwin, Parthiv Patel, Moeen Ali, Mandeep Singh, Manan Vohra, Pawan Negi, Tim Southee, Kulwant Khejroliya, Aniket Choudhary, Pavan Deshpande, Anirudha Ashok Joshi
Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Suresh Raina, Faf du Plessis, Harbhajan Singh, Dwayne Bravo, Shane Watson, Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayadu, Imran Tahir, Shardul Thakur, Jagadeesan Narayan, Mitchell Santner, Deepak Chahar, Asif K M, Lungisani Ngidi, Dhruv Shorey, Kanish Seth, Murali Vijay, Mark Wood, Kshitiz Sharma, Monu Singh, Chaitanya Bishnoi
Kings XI Punjab: Akshar Patel, KL Rahul, Ravichandran Ashwin, Andrew Tye, Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Karun Nair, Mujeeb Zadran, Ankit Singh Rajpoot, David Miller, Mohit Sharma, Barinder Singh Sran, Yuvraj Singh, Christopher Gayle, Ben Dwarshuis, Akshdeep Nath, Manoj Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Manzoor Dar, Pardeep Sahu, Mayank Dagar
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Krunal Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Kieron Pollard, Pat Cummins, Evin Lewis, Suryakumar Yadav, Ben Cutting, Mustafizur Rahman, Rahul Chahar, Pradeep Sangwan, Jason Behrendorff, Jean-Paul Duminy, Saurabh Tiwary, Tajinder Dhillon, Akila Dhananjaya, Nidheesh M D Dinesan, Aditya Tare, Siddhesh Dinesh Lad, Mayank Markande, Sharad Lumba, Anukul Roy, Mohsin Khan
Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Manish Pandey, Rashid Khan Arman, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddarth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Kane Williamson, Carlos Brathwaite, Shakib Al Hasan, Yusuf Pathan, Shreevats Goswami, Mohammad Nabi, Chris Jordan, Basil Thampi, T Natarajan, Sachin Baby, Bipul Sharma, Syed Mehdi Hasan, Ricky Bhui, Tanmay Agarwal
Rajasthan Royals: Steven Smith, Benjamin Stokes, Jaydev Unadkat, Sanju Samson, Jofra Archer, Krishnappa Gowtham, Jos Buttler, Ajinkya Rahane, Darcy Short, Rahul Tripathi, Dhawal Kulkarni, Zahir Khan Pakteen, Ben Laughlin, Stuart Binny, Dushmantha Chameera, Anureet Singh, Aryaman Vikram Birla, Midhun S, Shreyas Gopal, Prashant Chopra, Jatin Saxena, Ankit Sharma, Mahipal Lomror
Kolkata Knight Riders: Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Chris Lynn, Mitchell Starc, Dinesh Karthik, Robin Uthappa, Kuldeep Singh Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Nitish Rana, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Shivam Mavi, Mitchell Johnson, Shubman Gill, Ranganath Vinay Kumar, Rinku Singh, Cameron Delport, Javon Searless, Apoorv Vijay Wankhade, Ishank Jaggi
Delhi Daredevils: Prithvi Shaw, Abhishek Sharma, Manjot Kalra, Colin Munro, Trent Boult, Gautam Gambhir, Jason Roy, Amit Mishra, Shahbaz Nadeem, Naman Ojha, Glenn Maxwell, Harshal Patel, Rahul Tewatia, Jayant Yadav, Vijay Shankar, Mohammed Shami, Daniel Christian, Gurkeerat Singh, Kagiso Rabada, Avesh Khan, Sayan Ghosh, Sandeep Lamichhane, Chris Morris, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant.
-With PTI inputs.