BCCI re-confirms IPL schedule while Shane and Berry scared
May 15th, 2008
BCCI President Sharad Pawar said the multi-billion dollar Twenty20 event will go ahead as scheduled and the blasts in Jaipur will not affect the Indian Premier League in any way.
“The IPL will go ahead as scheduled. The next match in Jaipur (May 17) will also be held as scheduled. I have talked to the Rajasthan Chief Minister (Vasundhara Raje) and asked her to beef up security there. There will be enhanced security in other venues too,” the BCCI chief told reporters here on wednesday.
Pawar shot down any notion that the foreign players taking part in the IPL had any apprehension about their safety.
“No one has any apprehension. These things happen everywhere. It (bomb blasts) has happened even in London,” he said.
Meanwhile Shane Warne, the captain-coach of the ladder-leading Rajasthan Royals, is extremely shaken up by the terrorist attack in the team’s base city of Jaipur and held an emergency meeting last night with team owners, fellow players Graeme Smith and Shane Watson, and team manager Darren Berry.
Warne, Smith, Watson and Berry were in Goa at the time of the attack on a four-day break but they are refusing to return to Jaipur for the time being, and may not return at all.
Berry said there was “a real option of getting on the plane and getting out of here” as he recounted how he had been standing in the blast sight two nights before the attack. Seven bombs detonated simultaneously in crowded markets during peak-hour and, along with the many casualties, at least another 150 people taken to hospital.
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“This is an extremely uncomfortable situation,” Berry said from Goa. Cricket has been good to me, but I have a wife and three kids back in Melbourne and they are less than impressed with the part of the world I am in.
“I was talking to Warnie this morning and asked, ‘If this blast had occurred a day before we were due to fly over here, would we still have come?’ He said there was no way we would have come.
“It is terrifying. To think I was standing in the exact location the bombs went off only two days ago . . . it was a couple of kilometres from the team hotel. The whole country has gone into lockdown.”
While IPL commissioner Lalit Modi promised extra security at grounds yesterday, he said there were no plans to reschedule games - Rajasthan is due to host Bangalore on Saturday.
“That is the part that scares me,” Berry said. “These games are getting big crowds. People over here tell me this has nothing to do with cricket, it is political . . . but if some people are prepared to cause this type of damage, detonating bombs in peak-hour to harm the most number of people possible . . . 50,000 people come to the stadium to watch the games.”
As he spoke to The Age, Berry watched news coverage of the bombing on television. “The death toll just keeps getting higher . . . you can see them hosing a whole heap of blood off the streets.”
Tags: berry, blast, bomb, ipl schedule, jaipur blast, Rajasthan Royals, Shane WarnePosted in Cricket News, IPL - Delhi Daredevils, IPL - Hyderabad - Deccan Chargers, IPL - Rajasthan Royals, IPL News |