Ajit Wadekar, the former Indian skipper who led the side to memorable test series wins in England and the West Indies in 1971, is extremely annoyed at the Mumbai Cricket Association's decision to make some of the eminent former cricketers of the city sit in the stands at the Wankhede Stadium.
The players would watch the IPL match on Wednesday (20 April) night between the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bangalore instead of watching the action from the President's box (which has been the norm until now).
Wadekar spoke on behalf of an array of other cricketers who hail from the city and lamented the move. He blamed insensitive officials for this ignominious act and even termed them “senseless”.
According to a report in the Times of India, Wadekar lashed out against the organisation saying, “I was speaking to Nari Contractor (another ex-India captain), who too has been denied passes of the president's box. This is this first time something like that has happened.
“It shows how shameless these officials, who have no regard for our contribution to the game, are. They must realise that they're there because of the hard work we once put in. None of them are even picking up my phone. I've given away my tickets to someone else. This is an insult to us, and shows how much these officials think about the game.”
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According to the report, another known former cricketer thinks that the MCA President Sharad Pawar is capable of doing something as deplorable as this. He also accused officials of not passing tickets to them.
An MCA official tried to justify the move of the organisation by saying that the President may have decided to stop the practice of reserving tickets for former cricketers after seeing that they usually do not turn up for the match eventually.
He added that it is only the former India skipper and the ex-Mumbai cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar who turns up most of the time to watch the games.
He also explained the division of the tickets in the President's box till now and said that out of the 200 tickets, 100 go to the BCCI and the MCA president has 100 tickets, out of which 50 go to the managing committee of the association.
The act is surely going to create a lot of controversies as former cricketers think that it is humiliating for them to not be given tickets in the designated President’s box.
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