NEW DELHI – In what could come as a major worry for cricket fans as well as the BCCI, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has written to the home ministry citing its inability to provide security in the game between India and Pakistan on March 19.
The two arch-rivals of cricket are scheduled to clash at Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, in the ICC World T20 2016.
The match has been dogged by several reports regarding Pakistan’s participation in the competition being a doubt to questions over whether the match can take place at all, considering the security threat and the volatile Indo-Pak relations in recent times.
Now that almost everything has been kind of sorted out, here comes another major roadblock for the BCCI.
“The venues of the World Cup matches were decided one year ago, the allotment of matches was decided six months ago. People all over have made bookings and it is not fair to give such statements at the last minute,” BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur hit back at the Himachal Pradesh government.
“The Congress-led state government is clearly playing politics. Hundreds of Pakistani athletes were given security during the South Asian Games in Assam, why can’t the Himachal government do the same?” Thakur was quoted by the Press Trust of India.
“By claiming that you cannot provide security, you are only giving credence to Pakistani claims that there is a security threat to their team in India. It’s about the country’s image, you cannot play politics over it,” he said.
On Monday, the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) President Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu urged the BCCI to cancel or shift the match to some other venue as a homage to the family of the jawans who died in the Pathankot airbase attack right at the start of the year.
