The Board of Control for Cricket in India was considering to ask foreign players to choose between the cash-rich Indian Premier League or the Pakistan Super League.
The move is aimed at isolating Pakistan from world cricket as much as possible even as the board was not very keen on forfeiting the ICC World Cup game to the traditional foes.
After a lot of deliberation, the BCCI had dropped the idea of asking foreign players to choose between the IPL and the PSL, national daily Indian Express has reported.
The members of Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) — Vinod Rai, Diana Edulji and Lieutenant General Ravi Thodge — and CEO Rahul Johri had reportedly discussed the matter. However, they felt that since the players are contracted to the franchisees, it would be inappropriate on the BCCI’s part to issue them any diktat.
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Leading international professionals, like AB de Villiers, Dwayne Bravo, Sunil Narine, Carlos Brathwaite, Colin Ingram and Andrew Russell are participating in the ongoing PSL.
However, insidesport.co has reliably learnt, that the CoA has only shelved the idea. If the situation doesn’t import, the BCCI might consider to take an undertaking from the foreign players that they will not sign a professional contract with the Pakistan Cricket Board-owned league. But that will only happen after the upcoming IPL Season 12 and ahead of the next player draft.
It was felt that any decision taken in a haste may adversely affect IPL 2019. It won’t have been possible for foreign players to quit the ongoing PSL at this stage, any strong major by the BCCI could have left franchisees hunting for appropriate replacements, with a mere four weeks left for the IPL to start. Getting a replacement for the players like de Villiers, Brave or Narine was just impossible and the franchisee losing these players would have suffered irreparable damage.
“Why should we shoot ourselves in the foot by not playing (the World Cup)? We should seek their (Pakistan’s) ouster and remove them from the cricketing committee,” Rai had gold Indian Express about India’s plan to not to play Pakistan in the World Cup.
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