All due credit to Paul Ford of the Cricinfo blog ‘Different Strokes’ for the title, which aptly reflects what the BCCI have become.
Here’s another absolute classic from Dylan Cleaver of the New Zealand Herald..
It’s a truly absurd thing [for the BCCI] to flex their muscles in the commentary box for fear that Ravi Shastri (IPL) and Craig McMillan (ICL) might accidentally exchange bodily fluids that could eventually infect all the right-thinking people of the cricketing world.
The BCCI sure is stretching the limits of stupidity by ordering the NZC to withdraw Craig ‘Macca’ McMillian from the commentary box for the 1st test. Their biggest problem seems to be the fact that Ravi ‘Shaz’ Shastri is the gem of Sony Max (the broadcasters of the tour and of the IPL), and they don’t want an ICL player sitting beside him! I really think that someone has brainwashed all the officials of the BCCI into thinking that ICL players have some incurable disease (perhaps AIDS, with all due respect to people suffering from it) and that they might, by some chance, make someone else contract the disease just by standing beside them (which any right thinking person knows is not true).
I can vaguely understand the reasons for banning the ICL players from domestic cricket and the chance to represent India, but I think it is stretching the limits of absurdity to actually expect the world to do it.
Even before this stupid episode, the BCCI had asked Darryl Tuffey and Hamish Marshall to withdraw from the Auckland and Northern Districts teams respectively so that some of their test players could get some practice ahead of the test series. They did well by telling them to fuck off. However, the fact that the Indian board let the test players to play in the other teams contradicts their position because, since Tuffey and Marshall are still playing in the tournament, the NZ domestic competition should have been officially ‘ICL infected’!
Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik were also withdrawn from the curtain-raiser for the second T20i, which was supposed to be an exhibition match between 2 teams composed by the NZC because Karthik was set to play alongside Marshall. How stupid!
Off Cutter 