Is the BCCI invite to Sourav to the World Cup final an afterthought?
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has not invited former Indian cricket team captain and ex-BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly to attend the final match between India and Australia to be held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat tomorrow.
This was the gist of a post put by the esteemed sports journalist Gautam Bhattacharya on his Facebook page at 11.51 am today.
He wrote that Ganguly had landed in Ahmedabad this morning to attend an International Cricket Council (ICC) committee meeting. He will do commentary for the match and had been accordingly invited by the ICC and the official broadcaster Star Sports, but no invitation had been served by the BCCI.
This was surprising since Sourav is known to have good ties with BCCI Secretary and Asian Cricket Council (ACC) President Jay Shah, Bhattacharya wrote. He ascribed it to “miscommunication”—“surely there is a slip up somewhere”, as he said.
Finally, he added much later to his post, the invitation had come, but “less than 24 hours from the start of the match”.
Was this intentional or the result of a miscommunication? Was his invitation to the final by the Amit Shah-helmed BCCI an afterthought?
Hard to tell, considering the politically charged times that we are living in, with so many things linked to one’s standing, or not, in politics. Sports is no exception.
It needs to be noted that Sourav was rumoured to be joining the BJP in early 2021, before the Bengal assembly elections. It did not happen—not even a year later, when Home Minister Amit Shah came and dined at his Kolkata home.
Then, earlier this year he announced that he would be investing in Bengal, as a joint investor in a steel project in Salboni, which reportedly drew the ire of a section of the BJP.
In the light of all this, was his initial non-invitation a “slip up” or a slap in the face? Hard to tell, as we said earlier, but, as expected, the ‘Maharaja of Cricket’ (who has emerged as a master tactician off the field as well, wading the political waters expertly) has maintained a dignified silence. After all, what matters is the World Cup final, where India will face Australia, and the cricketer in Ganguly knows this very well.
