On Thursday, BCCI announced the squad for the three teams-Velocity, Supernovas, Trailblazers. Though there were overseas players participating from as much as five countries, no Australian player was named in the list to everyone’s surprise.
Considering the fact that the players like Perry, Healy, Schutt all played the one-off IPL-like challenge the last year and as the players have tweeted and wrote about how they were looking forward to this year’s challenge, the fans were left with no clue. Later, a well-known website tweeted that the Australian players were unavailable because of the Ashes preparation camp starts on May 13th.
Hours later, the Australian Cricket Board’s spokesperson revealed:
“We have been working with the BCCI on this and assisted them with activating the visa process earlier in the week. We confirmed yesterday (Wednesday) that the players would be released. There was no indication at that time that there were any problems with this and the BCCI were grateful for the support of the women’s IPL. We are very supportive of women’s IPL.”
Now, according to the reports on Cricinfo, the conflict between the two boards regarding the Men’s ODI series might be one of the major reasons for the confusion.
With almost all the schedules for 2020 has already fixed by the Cricket Australia, BCCI’s insistence to host Australian Men’s team for an ODI series has left the Australian broadcasters furious because of the absence of home cricket.
Further, the Australian Board didn’t show much interest to send the women cricketers to the T20 challenge along with negotiating the talks about the Men’s ODIs.
Also, it looks like the BCCI have once again sent a request for confirmation to the Australian Board early this month and since there was no reply from Cricket Australia, the board filled up the overseas slots with went ahead and filled the overseas slots, and announced the teams.
Still, the players are willing to join the team if the dispute between the board is solved.
