Former opener Mark Butcher feels the ECB ought to have agreed to the BCCI’s request to vary the Test collection schedule to accommodate the remaining video games of IPL as it could have given the England Board the leverage to get high Indian gamers for its ‘Hundred’ event.
The Indian Board had informally made a request to shift the five-match Test collection between India and England, beginning August 4, by every week to be able to accommodate the remaining 31 IPL video games however it has not met with any beneficial response from England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
“Well, listen. I take a deep breath here … as does the nation. I think it’s a massive missed opportunity,” Butcher mentioned throughout the newest Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast.
Butcher mentioned accepting the request would have given ECB the leverage to get high Indian cricketers equivalent to Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni for ‘The Hundred’ event, the ECB’s flagship venture.
“…the ECB is absolutely desperate to make this (Hundred) work. They have to be, they have bet the house on The Hundred, but at every turn, it seems a greater power doesn’t want it to happen,” mentioned the 48-year-old Butcher who performed 71 Tests for England between 1997 and 2004.
“And so for me, this was the opportunity where you’ll say ‘Okay, we’ll bite the bullet… We would do this for the BCCI on the proviso that we get Kohli, Dhoni, whoever we like, signed up for three years to play in The Hundred, starting 2022’.”
The inaugural version of ‘The Hundred’, a 100-ball event involving eight males’s and ladies’s groups, was scheduled to happen final 12 months however was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“And you have leverage for the first time ever: you have something that they need, that they want. Obviously, the BCCI will lose a lot of money if they don’t get the IPL in the window,” Butcher mentioned.
“You also have the extraordinary spectacle of the IPL being finished at the behest or because of English cricket. And you use that lever in order to get something you desperately need. So I think there’s an opportunity missed.”
The IPL was suspended early this month after a number of COVID-19 instances had been reported inside its bio-bubble.
According to a senior BCCI official, the IPL will now resume tentatively on September 18 or 19 within the UAE with as many as 10 double-headers anticipated to be performed throughout a three-week window.
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