Manchester blast raises security concerns over Champions Trophy; BCCI call for emergency meeting

With the Champions Trophy set to begin on June 1, teams have already started training for the quadrennial event in England. The Indian Cricket Team is scheduled to leave for England on Wednesday and will begin their campaign with the warm-up matches starting May 26 onwards. Reports say that the BCCI had decided to hold an emergency meeting before proceeding for the event.

The emergency meeting was called upon majorly because Manchester is not far from India’s warm-up games venue, The Oval, where both of their matches are going to be played. The meeting was scheduled to take place in Mumbai today and was, reportedly, supposed to involve the team management and logistics managers. The plan was also to discuss India’s tour schedule during the event, practice sessions, and to supervise the travel between the stadium to hotels. 

The International Cricket Council issued an official statement regarding the security arrangements at the event. While expressing grief over the incident, the ICC made it clear that the security of the players is the priority and issued assurances that they are paying close attention to it. The details of the security arrangements have been kept confidential by the ICC.

"The ICC and ECB place safety and security at the ICC Champions Trophy and ICC Women's World Cup this summer as the highest priority. We operate on advice from our Tournament Security Directorate - in conjunction with the ECB and relevant authorities - to ensure that we have a robust safety and security plan for both tournaments. We will continue to work with authorities over the coming hours and days and review our security in line with the threat levels," the ICC said in a statement, reported Cricbuzz.

"The security situation has been very much front and centre of our preparations and we constantly review our procedures to guarantee they are as effective as possible to keep everyone safe."