Test cricket is risky, but cash-rich IPL is game

As Team India players arrived in Manchester on Wednesday evening to participate in the fifth and final Test at the Old Trafford of the five-Test series, they were asked to take the RT-PCR test. The man conducting the tests was none other than assistant physiotherapist Yogesh Parmar, whose own Covid-19 result came positive some 16 hours later on Thursday morning.

Ideally, the match should have been called off or counted as forfeited, right then and there, but then this was not just an ordinary series or a typical match. This was Lancashire Cricket County Club's chance to make up for the county's enormous losses during the Covid pandemic.

The debate whether the England team should have been awarded this game to make the final result 2-2 would go on for quite some time because of the lack of clarity over such issues in the rule book of the International Cricket Council. But it may severely impact the England Cricket Board (ECB)'s immediate financial condition.

Read: For a change, spare the BCCI

For example, if the ICC decide to call off the Test due to Covid, the fifth Test will be treated as abandoned, and India will be awarded a 2-1 series victory. In this scenario, the ECB is unlikely to receive any insurance pay-out as "it is not covered for this eventuality".

However, if the ICC declares the game as "forfeited", the series would end at 2-2, and the ECB would be eligible to make a claim for an insurance pay-out of about 30 million pounds.

The fact remains that being the most powerful cricket board, the BCCI has managed to get the ECB to agree to a deal of cancelling this final game and "try and reschedule it to some later day". It remains to be seen how the two Boards can work out a window for the game, but given the packed FTP (Future Tours Programme) schedule, there is just one way to try and sandwich it when India return to England next year to play limited-overs series.

Well, that's the order of the day. The ECB can't blame the BCCI for flexing its muscles. Being the wealthiest cricket board in the world and one which has been providing that extra share of the money to players from all around the world, except Pakistan, no one can dare to raise their voice against India.

So, the ECB happily accepted all that big 20-million-pound approximate loss that Lancashire Country Cricket Club would suffer due to this cancellation, hoping to get more money-spinning India tours or compensated in other ways.

The ECB understood it much better than anyone else by their own experience only a few months back. It withdrew halfway from the South Africa tour earlier this year on an almost similar pretext. Also, Australia followed England's footsteps and cancelled a tour to the less powerful cricketing nation, South Africa.

Fielding second-string team

Another point of debate has been whether India could have fielded a second-string team, just like the Border-Gavaskar Trophy win at Brisbane in January this year, if some of the top players wanted to be in isolation.

India won in Australia with as many as six reserves players playing their part in the victory. But not a single player has come from Team India camp in Manchester, ready to take to the field. BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah, skipper Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma had a long video conferencing session. Only one thing emerged: "We're not interested in playing this game."

Agreed there were apprehensions about getting positive results during the match. Though, there were none till the morning of the Test. But given the nature of the Covid virus, no one can rule out that more positive cases would not come in the course of the next five days. The ECB did try and reason out with the help of a medical expert that "PCR tests now are more trusted and Indian players are anyway double vaccinated to be counted in safe zone".

Though neither camp is vocal enough to blame any individual, a whisper campaign has started against skipper Kohli and coach Ravi Shastri. They were both instrumental in risking the safety of players by taking them out of the safe bio-bubble to the latter's book launch.

The BCCI is particularly unhappy with Shastri as he didn't seek any permission before launching his book "Star Gazer" two days before the Oval Test. And all the Team India players, as could well be expected, were made to attend the book launch event because they had no other choice but to follow the diktat.

It was Shastri earlier, before the start of the Test series, who was seen attending a crowded football game in the Euro Championships. Later, Rishabh Pant was tested positive for committing a similar mistake as Shastri after watching a full-packed England vs Germany game on June 30.

IPL over Test cricket?

Ideally, any scared team or players would go in isolation after cancelling such an important game. But the entire Indian camp, and the BCCI, got into action to arrange the charter flights for the entire Team India players out of England to avoid getting stuck in strict United Kingdom Covid-related protocols.

This was obviously to save the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) starting in the United Arab Emirates from September 19. According to the UK rules, any player turning positive would have feared the consequences of a minimum of 10 days isolation, forcing him to miss a part of the IPL.

In simple terms, the IPL is worth crores of rupees to Indian players and thousands of crores to the BCCI. Captain Kohli thus conveyed on behalf of his players that "an infection could show up in the next couple of days as the negative Covid-19 test results on the eve of the match were not a guarantee of infection not germinating."

Without wasting any further time, Mumbai Indians secured Rohit Sharma, pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah, batsman Suryakumar Yadav in Abu Dhabi, while Royal Challengers Bangalore's chartered flight reached Dubai by Sunday morning with Kohli and pace bowler Mohammed Siraj on board.

(The writer is a sports journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

Check out the latest DH videos here: