Reports | No BCCI curators in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai

03/29/2019

After BCCI decided against sending curators from its panel to look after the pitches during IPL, three venues – Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai now will not have a BCCI curator to oversee the pitch preparations. Other five cities have local curators who are a part of BCCI's grounds and pitches committee.

After the low-scoring season opener between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore, there were some complaints from the franchise regarding the interference from the curators appointed by the Indian cricket board during the preparations of the pitches, which comes under the respective franchises. The board, meanwhile, has decided not to send the curators to other venues to oversee the preparations and the local curators will take control of that. While five venues have local curators in the BCCI's grounds and pitches committee, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai don’t have any which will affect the pitch preparation during the league.

"Curators are always told that the paying public comes to an IPL expecting runs to be scored. Dull pitches can turn away crowds. After the first game, all the venues were reminded of that philosophy and cautioned against having very low-scoring games. Such games also don't go down well with broadcaster as it cuts down live air-time," an official told TOI.

According to a TOI report, the International Management Group (IMG), in charge of the carrying out IPL operations, also has a written guideline regarding this which says that the local curator should be the in charge of the venue. There was another clause that the pitch, where a match is supposed to be played, should not be used for practice four days before the game. However, according to the newspaper, the BCCI had decided to have its own panel members at the venue after the IPL teams didn’t go along with the guidelines.

"BCCI curators received instructions from the board on Thursday afternoon to leave their bases. There has been no reason given for the move," a top BCCI official told TOI.

"There has been some unrest over this neutral curator system. BCCI officials are in a fix. There is no clear consensus on this," said an official.