India's rotation policy robbing cricket fans
The rotation policy of venues for international cricket in India is impractical, says Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
The rotation policy of venues for international cricket in India is impractical, says Anand Vasu in the Hindustan Times. The washed-out ODI in Goa, he writes, is a case in point.
The problem, however, is that such sensible and practical scheduling is impossible because the BCCI allots matches on the basis of its much-pilloried (occasionally deservedly) rotation policy. While this automatically means that the best matches are not necessarily played at the best venues, it also means that a state association could get a match when it was least prepared for it.
Only recently, the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association gave up a Test and an ODI, nominally because one stand at the Green Park in Kanpur was not ready, but also because the municipal authorities, who own the ground, and the UPCA, are constantly at loggerheads. For some time now, the BCCI has stressed the importance of state associations acquiring land and building their own stadia, and set up the necessary funding to make this possible. But this is a time consuming process, and at the moment cricket is still being played at grounds not owned by the state association.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo