ICC World Cup 2019: The reason why Virat Kohli-led India is playing their first match so late

It’s been a week since the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 started and joint-favourites India began their campaign against South Africa in Southampton on Wednesday.

Virat Kohli-led India will be hoping to begin their campaign on a high and they start as favourites against battered and depleted South Africa who have already lost two in two in the ongoing World Cup.

The Men in Blue are relatively fresh, considering their big boys of world cricket had close to 2 weeks of rest after the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019.

But why is India starting their World Cup campaign so late?

According to media reports, India was supposed to play their first World Cup match on June 2 against Bangladesh but the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to make the necessary changes in the schedule. The change was necessitated in the wake of the Lodha Committee reforms which said that India needed to have a 15-day gap between consecutive tournaments.

In this case, the consecutive tournaments are the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the World Cup. However, since the IPL 2019 finished on May 12, even a 15-day gap meant that India could go ahead with their original schedule of playing Banglashesh on June 2. It needs to be noted that the initial IPL schedule had May 19 as the date of the final, in this case, a 15-day hiatus would mean India could not begin its next assignment before June 3.

But the IPL season 12 started early because of the recently-concluded general elections in India and hence June 5 continued to be the date for India’s opening fixture.

This, meanwhile, raises eyebrows about the very sanctity of the fixtures of the premier cricket tournament in the world. Such a thing would have never been possible in any other popular sport.

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ANIRUDH SINGH
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