BCCI to review Ranji matches rescheduling decision

The BCCI's senior tournament committee will review the decision to reschedule the two Ranji Trophy league matches that had earlier been abandoned in Delhi due to smog and pollution. BCCI secretary Ajay Shirke took the decision during the board's Full Members' meeting in Delhi on Friday.

The two matches - involving Gujarat and Bengal from Group A and Hyderabad and Tripura from Group C - had been rescheduled to be played from December 15 to 18, four days after the completion of the final round. That led to protests from the Mumbai Cricket Association and the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association saying it would give the said teams "unfair advantage" to qualify for the knockouts.

While Mumbai have already booked a quarter-final berth by leading the Group A table with 29 points, Tamil Nadu, placed third with 23 points, need an outright win against Gujarat, second with 24 points, or a first-innings lead and other results going in their favour. The last round of the league stage will be played from December 7 to 10.

"Some members raised the issue in the meeting and in response to complaints received from members, our senior tournament committee will review the decision," Shirke told the Indian Express.

"We are going to have a full, detailed inquiry of this. The whole problem has come because the match referees (P Ranganathan for the Gujarat-Bengal game and Sanjay Sharma for the match between Hyderabad and Tripura) didn't wait to go into day three and day four. We are going to convene a meeting of the senior tournament committee, which is responsible to look into all such things. And once we hear from the persons concerned, we will take an appropriate decision in the matter. We are going to call the complainants also, who made the allegations."

Shirke is one of the members of the BCCI's senior tournament committee, which is chaired by Gautam Roy, also a board vice-president.

While the BCCI had stated in a press release dated November 6 that the board's technical committee rescheduled the matches, Sourav Ganguly, the committee's head, later told ESPNcricinfo that they had not made the decision to postpone the two matches.