Former Australia cricketer Lisa Sthalekar has lambasted the Board of Control for Cricket in India for the latter's insensitivity in handling contracted cricketers during the covid-19 pandemic. Sthalekar took to Twitter to lash out at the Indian board calling them out for not communicating with Indian cricketer Veda Krishnamurthy after the middle-order batswoman lost her mother and sister to the pandemic. Sthalekar's statements come after Krishnamurthy was dropped for the upcoming tour of England. Sthalekar further alleged that the board has not even called to check in on the cricketer and vented her anger on BCCI's handling of the situation.
“Whilst not selecting Veda for the upcoming series may be justified from their point of view, what angers me the most is that as a contracted player she has not received a communication from the BCCI, just to even check how she is coping,” she wrote on Twitter.
Krishnamurthy was dropped a day after Ramesh Powar was selected as the coach of the Indian women's team, an incident that was not free of drama as well. The outgoing coach WV Raman allegedly mailed the BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and National Cricket Academy head Rahul Dravid that 'prima donna culture' was hurting the women's team; an allegation that got Powar sacked three years back.
Read more about the incident by clicking here.
Krishnamurthy has played 48 ODIs and 76 T20Is for India. She has accumulated 829 runs in the ODIs while has notched up 875 runs in the shorter format.
Squad for Test & ODI: Mithali Raj (Captain), Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur (vice-captain), Punam Raut, Priya Punia, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Sneh Rana, Taniya Bhatia (wicket-keeper), Indrani Roy (wicket-keeper), Jhulan Goswami, Shikha Pandey, Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Poonam Yadav, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav.
Squad for T20I: Harmanpreet Kaur (Captain) Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Harleen Deol, Sneh Rana, Taniya Bhatia (wicket-keeper), Indrani Roy (wicket-keeper), Shikha Pandey, Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Poonam Yadav, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav, Simaran Dil Bahadur.