Picture Credit: ICC
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has denied permission to women cricketers in the country to take part in a T20 event slated to be played in Dubai. According to a report, the board has said no to five top women's cricketers seeking permission to participate in the global women's T20 Invitational tournament in 2022 from May 1-15 in Dubai, organized by Cricket Hong Kong and Fairbreak Global, an Australia-based global gender equality initiative.
The board has said that the tournament will clash with the last leg of its inter-state domestic Women's tournament which will begin on April 18. "The BCCI has denied issuing No-Objection certificates to the five Indian players who had signed up a contract last year to participate in this event-Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma and Jemima Rodrigues. This event will start on May 1, while the BCCI's domestic women's inter-state championship will start in Nagpur on April 18.
"The knockouts will start from May 1. The BCCI feels that it's important for all Indian women's cricketers to play in the domestic T20 tournament as it's the basis for the qualification for the 2023 T20 World Cup in February in South Africa. The Board also wants its players to be available for the Women's T20 Challenge, which will start from around May 24," the Times of India quoted a source.
Apart from the players, the board has also denied issuing NOC to match referee GS Lakshmi who officiated the Women's World Cup final between Australia and England.
90 cricketers from 36 countries to participate in T20 tournament
The T20 event scheduled to be held in Dubai will see 90 cricketers from 36 countries taking centre stage. 40 of these 90 cricketers are from Test-playing nations while the rest are from associate nations. The players will be divided into six groups of 15 players each.