BCCI Will Get their Way if They Want to Play in October: Chappell

Former Australia Ian Chappell believes that it is likely that the IPL will take over the slot originally scheduled for T20 World Cup in Australia, and the BCCI will have its way.

Talking to World Web of Sports, he said, “The first thing you know is that the BCCI will win.”

“They’ll get their way if they want to play in October. At this point it appears to me that the chances of the T20 World Cup going ahead are somewhere between Buckley’s and none.

“With so many countries, I just think it would be logistically way too difficult, but that’s purely a cricketer talking, not a medical person or someone with experience running a tournament like that.

“But it seems to me with 16 teams to worry about it’s probably going to be too hard, and if the BCCI want the IPL to take that slot they’ll probably get their way.”

He even went on to say that the Aussie cricketers should prefer playing the domestic tournaments over the IPL, and Indian boards dominance should come to an end. According to Chappell, the board might want to cancel the Australia series in retaliation, but should refrain from doing so.

“Well the BCCI might try to retaliate, but it would be pretty stupid, because apart from Australia and India there aren’t too many good Test-playing countries,” he said.

“To me, bully-boy tactics never work long-term, they might work in the short-term, but that’s it.

“It’s time someone in the cricket world had the guts to stand up to India and say ‘if that’s the way you want to play, that’s fine, we’ll find someone else.’

All this might result in some monetary losses, but Chappell is of the opinion that someone should be prepared to stand up to India.

“Sure it would be a whole lot of money down the drain, which at this stage would be difficult to swallow, but this is an opportunity to show the rest of the cricket world that there’s somebody prepared to stand up to India, and it’s time that a bit of common sense came into the scheduling.”