Hyderabad, Feb. 10: The Andhra Pradesh government today asked the Deccan Chargers to boycott the Indian Premier League (IPL) if the organisers insist on shifting the team’s matches out of the state capital.
State sports minister Komtireddy Venkat Reddy said the Chargers, winners of the 2009 edition of the league, would be asked to withdraw from the tournament if the IPL governing council relocates matches scheduled in Hyderabad on the ground that the law and order situation was uncertain because of the Telangana movement.
“We have requested Deccan Chargers not to play in the IPL if the inaugural match and the remaining four games are shifted out of Hyderabad,” Reddy told reporters at the secretariat.
A spokesperson for Deccan Chargers said there has been no decision on boycotting the IPL.
“We are playing as scheduled, there’s no change. We have to take a call on the government stand if the issue becomes serious. But the game is more important to us than locations. We played in South Africa last year,” he said .
The inaugural match, on March 12, between the Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders was to have been played in Hyderabad, but has now been shifted to Mumbai following growing concerns over security in the Andhra capital. Under the original schedule, five games were slated for Hyderabad and two in Vishakhapatnam.
Chief minister K. Rosaiah today wrote to Sharad Pawar, the former cricket board chief and Union agriculture minister, asking him to use his “good offices” and persuade the IPL governing council against moving out the matches from the spanking new Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Uppal, a Hyderabad suburb.
Rosaiah argued that the Telangana Joint Action Committee, spearheading the statehood movement, had assured the government that it would not come in the way of IPL matches in the city.
The sports minister had sent a similar missive to Pawar on Monday and enclosed a copy of the assurance given by the Telangana committee.
Reddy, who is from Telangana and had even submitted his resignation demanding statehood, said the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has not given any reason or intimation to the state government on its sudden change of mind.
“It will be a great disappointment to cricket lovers of Hyderabad and also to the game,” he said.
The security concerns arose after the statehood committee disrupted a local Deccan Twenty20 tournament last month in which Ranji teams of Hyderabad, Orissa and the Andhra region participated.
The BCCI has already relocated two ODI’s to have been played between the Indian and English women’s cricket teams in Hyderabad to Vishakhapatnam and Bangalore. State information minister J. Geeta Reddy, also an office-bearer of the Indian women’s cricket association, said: “The BCCI did not like to take any chances.”
N. Shivlal Yadav, former Test off-spinner and now vice-president of Hyderabad Cricket Association, said it was the BCCI’s decision to shift the two women’s matches, suggesting that the state body had little to do with the move.
