The Australian women cricketers have been stopped by their Board from participating in the planned women’s IPL next month owing to a men’s bilateral series dispute with the BCCI, which says its counterpart Down Under is indulging in “blackmail”.
Three Australian players — Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry andAlyssa Healy –, who would have been big draws draw in the women’s IPL havebeen stopped by Cricket Australia. The matches, to be held between three teams,will be held from May 6 to 11 in Jaipur.
An email from Cricket Australia’s top official Belinda Clark(former skipper) in possession of PTI indicates that stopping the three is a”pressure tactic” to ensure postponement of men’s ODI series.
As per the new Future Tours Program, Australia were supposedto play three ODIs in January 2020, which is during the peak Australian summer,owing to pressure from broadcasters.
“We will be in a position to consider the request when thecurrent issue regarding the men’s ODI series that was agreed in the FTP forlate January 2020 is resolved by Rahul (BCCI CEO Rahul Johri) and Kevin (CA CEOKevin Roberts). I understand that this is being worked through at present,”Clarke wrote an e-mail to the IPL operations team.
The BCCI has lambasted CA for putting conditions on therelease of women players.
“If you look at thecontents of Belinda’s email, it is clear that they are resorting toblackmailing tactics. How is releasing women players related to men’s series.It was agreed as per FTP and they want to backtrack now,” a senior officialtold PTI on condition of anonymity.
The BCCI’s IPL operations team had written to the CA for therelease of the three players on April 4 and Clark mailed on April 5.
“Since April 5, there hasn’t been a single communication from CA and we had no option but to name the teams. Using women players to sort out men’s cricket issue is in bad taste,” the official added.