World Cup 2019: Harsha Bhogle explains about India’s late start in the campaign

Team India is played its first match in the ongoing ICC World Cup 2019 against South Africa, while on the other hand, this is Proteas’ third match. Faf du Plessis’ men have already lost both of their earlier matches to England and Bangladesh. This scheduling preference for Indian team has not gone down well with many quarters of the cricketing world.

Most of the experts showed their ire on the World Cup schedule that sees India beginning their campaign after five days since the tournament started, meaning they got to see all the other teams in action. This happened due to the BCCI’s rule which says there should be at least a 15-day break between two tournaments for the Indian players.

This year, Indian Premier League and the general elections would have clashed, but the BCCI planned it well to not let it out of our country while covering the major venues. With assistance from the government and some nice workings by BCCI, the IPL 2019 was played in India without any problems.

IPL 2019 final was played on May 12 and thanks to the BCCI rule, India was scheduled to play their first match after seven World Cup matches. By the time India started their campaign, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan and South Africa had already played two matches each and the rest of the teams played a match each. This, however, didn’t go down well with some cricket experts on Twitter, who opined that the BCCI made ICC tweak the World Cup schedule which could be in favour of India.

Nick Compton and others question India’s late start, while Bhogle defends the team

There were opinions for which ICC hasn’t given any reason. England opener, Nick Compton even mentioned that India runs the cricket world and get whatever they want.

In a ten team tournament you’d expect after five games every team to have played one game each, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an explanation why South Africa has played two and India none yet. #CWC19

— Rick Eyre on cricket (@rickeyrecricket) June 2, 2019

They are INDIA and they run the cricket world I guess

— Nick Compton (@thecompdog) June 3, 2019

However, eminent Indian journalist Harsha Bhogle came forward to reveal the reason behind the scheduling and said BCCI had no hand in making ICC change the schedule. The IPL schedule was instead tweaked as World Cup matches were decided way before the IPL time table was set.

I checked with @BCCI and was told that the World Cup schedule came out much earlier and that the IPL schedule was adjusted accordingly.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) June 5, 2019