Central yet peripheral

The New Zealand tour of India is continuing after all.  The story about the BCCI calling off the tour of India with a test and 5 ODIs to go came from nowhere, and proved to be a petulant piece of BCCI brinkmanship.  Not that we have had any formal announcement to this effect.

Miffed indeed. 

As an aside, and this is not a usual recommendation, it is worthwhile to read the comments on that article if only to see how messy and polarised the whole thing is.  The Supreme Court of India and the BCCI would seem to be a fine couple.

New Zealand Cricket was pretty much the last organisation to learn of this.  Sadly, that should not come as a surprise; why keep the other affected party in the loop when there is an internal war taking place?

Even though David White is in India he was unable to make contact with the BCCI at a time when there was quite a lot of important stuff to sort out; travel arrangements for example.

Know your place New Zealand.  Collateral damage.

As it turns out the BCCI funds have not been frozen (as if they wouldn’t have some stashed away anyway) and operational costs; things like paying players, were available.  But it seems as if the need to do some sabre rattling was too good a chance to miss.

This is the organisation that, amongst other things, allegedly walked away from a deal with a cricket ball supplier when it became apparent they would have to pay for them.

According to ICC rules India would should have been docked 48 test ranking points for pulling a stunt like that; thereby relegating it to eight on the world rankings.  Those test rankings it had topped so triumphantly at the end of the second test.

But that would have involved the ICC enforcing rules without favour.  There is no point in getting concerned or even wondering about what may have been.

We should not be surprised at this confirmation of The World Order.  But some common courtesy would have been nice.

What an honour to play a silent bit-part piece in a tawdry self-indulgent soap opera.