BCCI refuses to send Indian cricket teams for Asian Games again: Report

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The Indian cricket board (BCCI) refused to send Indian teams for the Asian Games despite repeated queries by Indian Olympic Association (IOA), reported Indian Express on Thursday. BCCI has cited international commitments as the reason behind not sending teams for the quadrennial event.

India's chef de mission for the Asian Games, Bhupender Bajwa told the daily that the nation has entries in all sports for the multi-sport event, except cricket. The event is slated in the Chinese city of Hangzhou from September 23 after a year of postponement. BCCI was likely to opt out of the Asian Games last year too.

While India is targeting its best-ever performance at the Asian Games in Hangzhou this year, it won't be able to bank on one sport to add to the medal tally - cricket. For, it is the only sport where the country won't be represented at the Games, which will be held from September 23 to October 28.

"We have entries in all sports except one - cricket (team) isn't going," Bajwa said. "They said they are preoccupied. We sent 3-4 emails to them but when we had to send entries to the organisers, they said they won't go."

The report further quoted a BCCI official claiming that IOA sent the email a day before the deadline to send entries. "We had received the mail from IOA just one day before the deadline. At the same time, the BCCI already has finalised the FTP for women's cricket. During the Asian Games, our team won't be available as they will be playing in a tournament," the BCCI official said.

Indian men's team will be playing 50-over World Cup at home in October-November while the women's team is scheduled to play South Africa and New Zealand in the limited-over formats. This is not the first time BCCI didn't send a team for the Asian Games as they skipped the 2010 and 2014 editions as well. The 2018 Asian Games didn't include cricket.

BCCI, however, allowed the women's team to play in the Commonwealth Games last year, where they won the silver medal. The women's team, however, played the event without the BCCI's crest but under the national flag as IOA is in charge of the team while the selection of the team is being done by the cricket board. The same applies to all the other federations.

This is also often cited as the reason why BCCI is reluctant to send teams for multi-sport events. The board in the recent past has practiced playing parallel series with a different set of squads as Shikhar Dhawan led the second-string squad in Sri Lanka while Virat Kohli led the main squad for the Test series against England.

Back in 1998, BCCI also sent its men's team for the Commonwealth Games in Kula Lumpur with Ajay Jadeja leading the side while Mohammad Azharuddin led a star-studded team for a bilateral series against Pakistan in Canada.