NEW DELHI, India: India’s Sports Minister is likely to mediate in the row over a six month ban imposed on the country’s cricket Captain Dilip Vengsarkar, a leading sports official said on Friday.
The ban has raised the prospect that none of the country’s leading players will agree to play in the Asia Cup tournament in Dhaka later this month and the Sharjah Cup in the United Arab emirates next month.
The official, who asked not to be named, said influential members of the ruling Congress (I) Party had asked Human Resources Development Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who has responsibility for sport, to persuade the board of control for cricket in India (BCCI) to lift the ban.
N.KP. Salve, a former BCCI President and India’s cricketing elder statesman, had also been asked to intervene before the situation got out of hand, the official said.
The board on Wednesday suspended Vengsarkar from International or Domestic matches for six months and fined him 10,000 rupees (750 dollars) for breaching his contract by writing newspaper articles on international matches,
His teammates gave him a letter to the BCCI whose text was issued by Vengsarkar on Friday.
It read: “It is with regret we note your action against our Skipper Vengsarkar for his syndicated column on behalf of the team,
“We hereby wish to inform you that Vengsarkar had written on behalf ‘of the team and hence, owning the moral responsibility, we collectively wish to inform that we will not be: available to play until the ban on Vengsarkar is lifted”,
NEW PLYMOUTH, New Zealand: England will not replace injured pace bowler Neil Foster, who was returning home on Saturday less ‘than a week before the first Cricket test against New Zealand, Tour manager Peter Lush said the five seam bowlers left in the party would be enough,
Article extracted from this publication >> February 12, 1988
