MEETING AGENDA
Follow UsThe Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Apex Council will meet in Dubai on September 20 (Monday) to discuss a range of issues pertaining to Indian Cricket and it has become a primary focus just a day after Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians resumed the second half of the IPL 2021 rivalry in the Emirate City. The meeting will be attended by BCCI President Sourav Ganguly, Secretary Jay Shah, Treasurer Arun Dhumal, ICA Representative Pragyan Ojha among others.
Finalising Home season
One of the major agendas for the meeting will be to ratify the home season, with New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and West Indies touring for full-fledged series apart from South Africa, who will play only T20Is following the conclusion of the 15th Indian Premier League. Cricket.com understands that India are set to host four Test matches (two each against New Zealand and Sri Lanka) and as many as 14 T20Is in the race to the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
Unlike last home season, this will not be a concentrated caravan as the BCCI moved to the normal game allocation method. While Kanpur and Mumbai are awarded Test matches for the New Zealand series, Bengaluru and Mohali will play host to Sri Lanka in February-March 2022.
Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association (UTCA) is requesting to allocate a Test match in Lucknow, with the venue expecting to be the home of a new IPL franchise from next season onwards. If that request is agreed upon, Kanpur will lose the New Zealand Test to the neighboring city. Further, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Cuttack, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Mohali, Dharamsala, Lucknow, Chennai, Nagpur, Rajkot, Delhi are earmarked for limited-overs matches this year.
Domestic Players Compensation
After a year-long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ranji Trophy, India’s premier domestic competition, has finally returned to the calendar in a new format. While the first-class tournament will kick-start on January 13 across Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum, and Chennai, the final is slated for March 16-20 at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
However, to compensate for the cancellation of the last year’s first-class event, the BCCI had formed a working group comprising Rohan Jaitley (north zone), Yudhvir Singh (central), Jaydev Shah (west), Devajit Saikia (north-east), Avishek Dalmiya (east) and Santhosh Menon, and Mohammad Azharuddin (south) and they have urged the BCCI to increase the Ranji match fee will also be increased from Rs 1.4 lakh to anywhere between Rs 2-2.5 lakh beginning with the upcoming season.
They have also suggested that BCCI will pay Rs 70,000 per match to every player and suitably pay the umpires, match officials, video analysts, and scorers for last year and a decision in that regard will be taken into consideration in the meeting. It is expected BCCI will announce their final workaround at the conclusion of the meeting itself.
Sexual Harassment Policy
Until now, the BCCI haven’t formed a Sexual Harassment committee to deal with internal and external complaints. When former Chief Executive Rahul Johri found himself in troubled waters with sexual harassment cases emerging against him, the BCCI had formed an internal committee. But the decision regarding the formation of a permanent committee will be taken in the 9th Apex Council meeting in Dubai today.
Addition of New IPL teams
With the BCCI set to auction the new bids in less than a month’s time for two new IPL teams from next year, an evaluation will be conducted in the meeting on Monday. The BCCI had already floated the tender document to acquire the right to own and operate the teams with the tender can be bought by companies with a valuation of ₹3,000 crores. Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Indore, Cuttack, Guwahati, and Dharamsala have been chosen for bidding with Ahmedabad and Lucknow being the front-runners with Adani Group of Companies and Sanjeev Goenka-owned RPSG group planning to bid for them respectively.
