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Journalism of Courage
CHENNAI, OCT 20: The cricket board has made it mandatory for every state association to appoint a physio keeping in view the increasing importance of sports medicine, president, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Dr AC Muthiah said today. Addressing his first press conference on home `pitch’ since being elected as the BCCI president, Muthiah, who is also the president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) said the newly appointed physio of the Indian team and experts selected with his help, would pick the physios for various state association.
“They will be sent abroad to other cricket playing countries to gain expertise,” he announced. Fielding a volley of questions on various cricketing issues, Muthiah said the BCCI was awaiting the final verdict of the panel of eminent judges on the contentious issue of involvement of any of our players in match fixing. On the future of cricketing ties between India and Pakistan, he said the BCCI per se was not not opposed to cricketing ties withPakistan. Even in Toronto recently it was only our patriotic spirit which made us decide against playing Pakistan. “Otherwise, we had not received any direction not to play against Pakistan,” he said. Sports and politics were different, he averred. Muthiah said as per the directions of the International Cricket Conference (ICC), on security measures, the international match centres in the country had been asked to implement them to boost them and publicise it in the media. “Otherwise, they would be stripped of the status to stage international matches,” he said.
The BCCI would also take a decision whether to have one exclusive cricket academy on the lines of the Australian Cricket Academy, at Bangalore or make it the central one and have individual zonal academies. A final decision would be taken after former BCCI chief Rajsingh Dungarpur, who has been asked to draw up the plans on setting up the academy, submitted his suggestions.
The board would be giving more thrust to domestic cricket and adecision on national players’ mandatory participation would be announced soon. On the number of matches to be played by Indian cricketers, Muthiah said the ICC had laid down certain rules and “we have not over-shot the stipulations.”
