U-19 Cooch Behar Trophy postponed: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has postponed the ongoing Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy tournament in Pune. This decision has been taken mainly after the increasing cases of COVID in Maharashtra and infection between the teams. The tournament had reached the quarter-final stage which was to begin on Tuesday (11 January).
The BCCI confirmed the cancellation late Monday evening. In a mail to state associations, Secretary Jay Shah said, “Unfortunately, there have been cases of COVID-19 in a team environment and now we are forced to postpone the knockout phase keeping in mind the health and safety of all.” “
The BCCI secretary explained the status of the postponement. He wrote: “I thank you for your understanding and your support in our decision to postpone domestic tournaments in view of the rising COVID-19 cases across India.
It was not included in the tournaments that had been postponed earlier by the BCCI. The Cooch Behar Trophy, which had already begun, was said to be continued. Because had successfully completed the league stage in 93 matches at 20 places. With only 7 matches left for the knockout stage in Pune with the quarter-finals from tomorrow, the decision had to be taken under compulsion.
Shaw expressed hope of restarting the tournament once the situation improves. “Once the graph goes down again and the situation improves, we will resume the knockout phase of the tournament.”
A player from the Mumbai team that had qualified for the quarter-finals was infected, and had to be isolated right after the pre-quarterfinal game. Similar cases were also found in Saurashtra, which was knocked out of the competition in the pre-quarterfinal stage.
BCCI and MCA officials have claimed that every effort has been made to go ahead with the tournament, but it is not possible to continue due to the deteriorating situation. An official has said that such cases have come to the fore in most of the teams, which forced the BCCI to cancel it. In the Mumbai team alone, five players and a member of the support staff were infected.
Apart from Mumbai, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Vidarbha, Bengal, Haryana and hosts Maharashtra have qualified for the last-eight stage and action was to be taken from Tuesday.
The BCCI recently postponed the Ranji Trophy and the Col CK Nayudu Trophy which were scheduled to begin this month. The board also postponed the Senior Women’s T20 League, which was slated to start next month, and said that the decision was taken “in view of the increasing number of Covid cases in the country”.
first published:Jan. 10, 2022, 5:06 p.m.
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