Officials surprised with BCCI's announcement of as many as 2127 matches in upcoming domestic season

After the announcement of the Indian domestic season which includes the Ranji Trophy after a break on the tournament for a year, some of the state body officials are not overly excited about the development.

 As per their words, holding as many as 2127 matches including the matches at the junior level seems unlikely especially after the BCCI took the T20 World Cup out of India. 

Taking a dig at BCCI, one of the officials said that it is funny to see BCCI announcing the domestic schedule after taking the showpiece event which was earlier scheduled to be played in India to the middle east. 

"It is funny. Seems like the COVID-19 situation has improved within three days (the announcement of T20 World Cup moving to UAE due to Covid-19 came on June 29 i.e. Tuesday) and the danger of third wave or fourth wave has been averted! Either that, or the cricket board thinks that safety and health of domestic cricketers is not as important as that of international cricketers," a senior state body official was quoted by TOI on the condition of anonymity. 

BCCI in a statement on Saturday said that they are confident of hosting all the domestic matches with proper safety protocols and keeping in mind the health of all the players. The 2021-22 domestic season is slated to run from 21st September 2021 to 26th March 2022. 

"The BCCI is confident of hosting the domestic season with health and safety of players and all people involved being paramount," the Board said in its statement.

One of the state officials expressed his concern over BCCI President Sourav Ganguly’s comments earlier this week that the T20 World Cup was shifted out of India in order to ensure utmost safety for the players. The official questioned BCCI that when they are not confident of keeping players from 16 countries safe then how is it practically feasible to keep players from 38 states in men’s and 37 in women’s safe. 

"It is impractical. We are still not sure if the tournament will get underway. The BCCI has announced 2,127 games. They are too many. If some of the matches get affected by Covid-19, you will have to cancel them, maybe split points and it will make a mockery of the event," added the official.

Another state official stated that the association is considering it only as a tentative schedule as anything can happen in the coming months. 

"I will consider it as a tentative schedule only. At best I think we can be sure that they will be able to host limited-overs tournaments only. It is very difficult to host multi-day games. This will require huge effort, especially when we are not sure about the status of COVID-19 in the country," the official said.

"There is the issue of vaccination," said one more official. In India, vaccination is open to people above 18 years of age. "They have also scheduled under-16 tournament -- the Vijay Merchant Trophy. How will you get the under-16 players vaccinated. Some of the under-19 players (in the Cooch Behar Trophy) too will be below than 18 years," added the official.