IPL 2018: Six captains will not attend the opening ceremony

The eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is fast approaching and the opening match is scheduled to be played on April 7. Defending Champions Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings will lock horns at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The opening ceremony of the tournament will take place just before the commencement of the match. However, it is practically impossible for the other team captains to attend the ceremony as they will have to play the very next day.

Every year, the ceremony takes place a day before and is attended by all the captains where they sign the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ pledge. This time around though Supreme Court appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) rescheduled the opening ceremony and directed BCCI to arrange it on the match day itself. But they didn’t realise that it won’t be possible for all the captains of the franchises to attend the same.

Special video shoot of other captains

After a major goof up ahead of the IPL, the BCCI has now decided that only Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni, MI and CSK skippers, will attend the opening ceremony. The other six captains will do a special video shoot on April 6 and leave for their respective cities that very evening itself. There is a double header on April 8 with Delhi Daredevils taking on Kings XI Punjab at 4 PM and RCB will face off KKR in the evening.

“IPL team should have done their homework. They are calling Gautam Gambhir and Ravichandran Ashwin a day before an afternoon match. That’s absolute lack of homework,” the senior BCCI official told PTI on Wednesday. The official was fumed over the goof up made by the IPL Governing Council and believed that they should’ve taken the logistics into consideration.

“Sample this. If Ashwin and Gambhir would have attended the opening ceremony, they could only boarded a 9 pm flight from Mumbai to Delhi as there are no late evening flights from Mumbai to Chandigarh. Now from Delhi, they can’t take a flight to Chandigarh on Sunday morning because the airport would remain close. So either they travel by car during the night, which is a dangerous proposition or in the morning of the match to play at 4 pm. The less said, better it is,” he added.

The acting president of BCCI CK Khanna also accepted the mistake and cleared that the other six captains will not have to attend the opening ceremony. “We are aware that there are some logistical issues that have cropped up. It will be sorted at the earliest. I think captains will be called a day earlier and their portion will be shot and shown during the opening ceremony,” he said.

Here’s our video of the day:

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