India Tour of England 2021

Doodlesweaver

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Entire test match called off. Apparently India forfeiting the test match because of covid concerns. Crazy

Can't blame anyone for wanting a test match called off for Covid concerns and wanting to go home. So many people in England have decided the pandemic is over when there is over 700 deaths and heading upwards per week. The last 7 days was closer to 1000 deaths!
 

Park cricketer

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Should be an Indian forfeit, anything else just reeks of the ICC being in Indias back pocket. Delay the test a week - if India can’t make it because of IPL and the money involved then tough

What an utterly stupid post, but predictable.

You only forfeit when you don't field a team on your own volition like when Pakistan refused to take the field at the Oval as a form of protest against Darrel Hair or when some muslim athletes refuse to play against Israeli athletes at the Olympics.

Everyone accepted the unprecedented circumstances due to the pandemic when cricket restarted and it was accepted that a covid outbreak was a valid reason for abandoning a match according to the WTC rules. I know the BCCI is not the most popular organisation going around due to its unfettered power, but asking the Indian team to forfeit the match is akin to insinuating that the Indians deliberately caught the covid virus and therefore should be punished for it. I wonder why the games were not awarded to South Africa when England and Australia refused to tour South Africa, citing virus outbreak among the hotel staff but the Indians are expected to forfeit when the entire coaching staff has been wiped out from the team management due to a covid outbreak within the team.

I know that the players tested negative. But Shastri tested positive a week back, then two other coaches tested positive afterwards and the coach, batting coach, bowling and fielding coach and the physio were isolated. India were left with only the assistant physio who was tending to the injured players like Rohit, Pujara and recuperating the fast bowlers during the Oval test. Now that assistant physio has tested positive too. It is highly likely that at least some players might be in the incubation period of their infection. What is the contingency plan when say 3-4 players in the playing XI return positive tests on the 3rd day of the test? If you're going to substitute them, wouldn't the other remaining players in the XI have already been exposed to the covid positive players during the first 2 days? The only sensible thing to do was to either abandon or postpone the game, although it should have been done the previous day and not on the day of the test to avoid inconvenience to the fans.
 

konkani

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The thing is though that it's very understandable to me why people get pissed off with India. I am part Indian, and I have a huge msasive attachment to the country and would like love it if they didn't act with the kind of entitled jerkishness they do. I would probably support them heaps more like I do the women's team.
As Geoff Lemon and the other bloke who does the Final Word cricket podcast pointed out, Ravi Shastri's behaviour, not just now but throughout covid times has been arrogant as f*** - and I don't think it was just Shastri, I am hearing Kohli as well.
And what consequences are there?
This is where the sycophantic behaviour of aspects of the press in India really gives me the shits. I would love to see an Indian team that didn't act with the kind of arroagance and unaccountability that simply allows this kind of behaviour to go unnoticed. Anyway just my 2 cents as someone who probably does have skin in the game that is seeing a more likeable Indian cricket.
 

Park cricketer

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If Australia acted the way India do, the media and public would be bashing them, that's the thing I hate. The double standards in the Australian public is crap.

India pulled out of the test match after its coach, bowling coach, fielding coach and physio have caught the covid virus.

England pulled out of South Africa after a receptionist and a lobby worker in their hotel tested positive.

Australia didn't bother turning up in South Africa despite CSA going the extra mile in making arrangements for the bio bubble for the Australian team. But sure go on.
 

magpiemaniac44

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India pulled out of the test match after its coach, bowling coach, fielding coach and physio have caught the covid virus.

England pulled out of South Africa after a receptionist and a lobby worker in their hotel tested positive.

Australia didn't bother turning up in South Africa despite CSA going the extra mile in making arrangements for the bio bubble for the Australian team. But sure go on.
I meant more about the arrogance and smugness they play with.

But if we are talking about the COVID situation, anyone that pulls out in the middle of a test series to play a domestic T20 league is a pack of sooks. If they really can't have played even though there all tested negative they could've just postponed it a week. No doubt when the IPL starts next week, the threat of COVID will magically disappear. BCCI is the most corrupt board in the history of sport.
 

Park cricketer

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I meant more about the arrogance and smugness they play with.

But if we are talking about the COVID situation, anyone that pulls out in the middle of a test series to play a domestic T20 league is a pack of sooks. If they really can't have played even though there all tested negative they could've just postponed it a week. No doubt when the IPL starts next week, the threat of COVID will magically disappear. BCCI is the most corrupt board in the history of sport.

Is this any different to ECB and CA refusing to tour South Africa or NZ refusing to tour Bangladesh citing the covid situation but all those players magically turning up in India to play the IPL when people were dying in hospitals en masse. Commercialisation of the game has changed the nature of the game itself and it's not just limited to cricket, with concepts like the European Super League in football.
 

Santana

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If Australia acted the way India do, the media and public would be bashing them, that's the thing I hate. The double standards in the Australian public is crap.
first-time-meme.gif


Just look at the amount of people who ripped into Australia for pulling out of the SA tour but are now sitting back and softly applauding some of the England players as heroes for threatening to pull out of the Ashes tour because all the quarantine rules may not be completely changed for them.
 

konkani

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The thing is though that it's very understandable to me why people get pissed off with India. I am part Indian, and I have a huge msasive attachment to the country and would like love it if they didn't act with the kind of entitled jerkishness they do. I would probably support them heaps more like I do the women's team.
As Geoff Lemon and the other bloke who does the Final Word cricket podcast pointed out, Ravi Shastri's behaviour, not just now but throughout covid times has been arrogant as f*** - and I don't think it was just Shastri, I am hearing Kohli as well.
And what consequences are there?
This is where the sycophantic behaviour of aspects of the press in India really gives me the shits. I would love to see an Indian team that didn't act with the kind of arroagance and unaccountability that simply allows this kind of behaviour to go unnoticed. Anyway just my 2 cents as someone who probably does have skin in the game that is seeing a more likeable Indian cricket.
To be perfectly clear, the specific behaviour i am talking about is the bookstore incident where Ravi Shastri "selflessly" attended his autobiography launch recently during covid (obviously), which the Final Word podcast spoke about in their show the other day.

Edit to include podcast link which is pretty damn reasonable and thorough:
 
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The Indian cricket team have used Covid as an excuse to get out of playing the 5th Test because it compromises their players involvement in the upcoming IPL series.

I consider this nothing short of disgusting !!

This is just one ingredient that is bit by bit, dwindling the interest & popularity of world cricket right now.
 

to1994

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I don't really see how International Cricket, particularly Test Cricket can work if we're going to be open up, vaccinated and yet having to cancel a Test because support staff came back testing positive. Bubbles aren't sustainable long term and you really just cannot call off Cricket based on some Covid cases in the vicinity if you want Tests to survive.

I think it's pretty obvious that India didn't really want to play the Test, Dinesh Karthik who spoke to the team barely mentioned Covid and it was more about how India were stressed out from a long tour/bubbles etc. and needed some time off.

That's fine, but it sounds more a question of scheduling and not totally Covid related. That's mostly on the ECB, this series was pushed back in order to prioritise the Hundred so they've got themselves to blame in that respect.

That said I don't think a 2-1 to India is a fair result here. If they want it to line-up that way for WTC points then fair enough but I don't think India can consider this a series won in England. Otherwise why not just make up an excuse and go home every time you get ahead in a series.
 

to1994

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Is this any different to ECB and CA refusing to tour South Africa or NZ refusing to tour Bangladesh citing the covid situation but all those players magically turning up in India to play the IPL when people were dying in hospitals en masse. Commercialisation of the game has changed the nature of the game itself and it's not just limited to cricket, with concepts like the European Super League in football.

Didn't the players want to go to South Africa but CA didn't want it to go ahead? The different here is the BCCI wanted them to play but the players didn't want to.
 

t_94

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Is this any different to ECB and CA refusing to tour South Africa or NZ refusing to tour Bangladesh citing the covid situation but all those players magically turning up in India to play the IPL when people were dying in hospitals en masse. Commercialisation of the game has changed the nature of the game itself and it's not just limited to cricket, with concepts like the European Super League in football.
I’ll give you that in that BCCCI, ECB and CA are all pieces of s**t.
 

Park cricketer

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Didn't the players want to go to South Africa but CA didn't want it to go ahead? The different here is the BCCI wanted them to play but the players didn't want to.

Well they were losing out on making the WTC final because of missing the series and the players certainly didn't make their voices heard enough to push CA to give the tour a go, given the extraordinary measures CSA took to arrange a bio secure bubble for the Australian players according to their specifics as mentioned by Graeme Smith in his interview.

I wonder if the Australian players would be as eager to take the field if their entire coaching setup became covid positive. I think they'll be on the flight to Sydney after the first case gets detected inside their camp.
 

glenferry23

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Just an unfortunate situation really. Hard quarantines, biosecure bubbles for the players and their families, long tours etc. It really seems to have taken a toll over the last 18 months.
 

to1994

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I wonder if the Australian players would be as eager to take the field if their entire coaching setup became covid positive. I think they'll be on the flight to Sydney after the first case gets detected inside their camp.

I mean, maybe. But India didn't fly home, they flew straight to the IPL and started taking team photos during the time the 5th Test was scheduled to be on.
 
I wonder if India would have pulled out if the scoreline was 1-1 or 1-2 with one to play?
The answer to that question is obvious.
 

Park cricketer

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I mean, maybe. But India didn't fly home, they flew straight to the IPL and started taking team photos during the time the 5th Test was scheduled to be on.

And if an IPL was scheduled right after that series they pulled out, I can bet that the Australians would hop on to the next plane to Mumbai from Sydney.

It's just the nature of the game. Indians were in the UK twiddling their thumbs for more than a month after the WTC final, but when the BCCI asked to prepone the test series to give leeway for their IPL, the ECB declined because they wanted to get their Hundred competition in. It's not something we like to hear, but the nature of the game is that money spinning T20 comps take precedence even over Test cricket, as bad as it sounds.
 

corbies

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And if an IPL was scheduled right after that series they pulled out, I can bet that the Australians would hop on to the next plane to Mumbai from Sydney.

It's just the nature of the game. Indians were in the UK twiddling their thumbs for more than a month after the WTC final, but when the BCCI asked to prepone the test series to give leeway for their IPL, the ECB declined because they wanted to get their Hundred competition in. It's not something we like to hear, but the nature of the game is that money spinning T20 comps take precedence even over Test cricket, as bad as it sounds.
Yes. This is literally what we're all complaining about.
 

konkani

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The thing is that the simmering anger and resentment towards any country that holds too much power in a sport is pretty understandable, to me and to many.

I will admit though - this is a complex issue. I would recommend the book 'Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution' (by some of the guys that do winviz i am pretty sure) for something of a history of the period in time that T20 took off, and leading to the IPL and the BCCI's decision to ban Indian players from participating in other T20 leagues around the world, and the T20 world in general. It did give me a lot more appreciation for both the IPL (not how it is run though at all) and T20.

There is a lot of things that a lot of people in cricket (not just India) should be answering to. Jarrod Kimber is one of the more clear-headed voices that has been talking about how cricket has been crying out for something like a governing body (instead of a small series of 'interest committees') for quite a while now.
 
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Park cricketer

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Yes. This is literally what we're all complaining about.

Well I suppose the part where we disagree then is that I don't think a game was possible on the first day of the Manchester test. Dobell said in a video on cricinfo about having talked to the CEOs of other individual boards and he said almost all of them felt that they wouldn't have played either in India's situation.

There are reports in Indian media that Kohli had asked for postponing the game by 2 days but it was apparently rejected by the ECB. Not sure how credible those reports are though. We did hear speculations on social media that the game could be postponed by 2 days before the game was officially cancelled.

 

swingdog

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Well I suppose the part where we disagree then is that I don't think a game was possible on the first day of the Manchester test. Dobell said in a video on cricinfo about having talked to the CEOs of other individual boards and he said almost all of them felt that they wouldn't have played either in India's situation.

There are reports in Indian media that Kohli had asked for postponing the game by 2 days but it was apparently rejected by the ECB. Not sure how credible those reports are though. We did hear speculations on social media that the game could be postponed by 2 days before the game was officially cancelled.


Why would the ECB not have delayed the match by 2 days? As opposed to losing 30 million pounds.
 

Park cricketer

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Why would the ECB not have delayed the match by 2 days? As opposed to losing 30 million pounds.

Yeah there might be logistical difficulties of postponing the test but still believe the ECB would have taken up the offer. It's why I'm not sure about the credibility of the report.
 
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