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BCCI, ICC spar over punishment to women's team

India says men's team may withdraw from Champions Trophy after women's team docked points for refusing to play Pakistan

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Indian women’s cricket team was docked points for forfeiting three matches against Pakistan between August 1 and October 31
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Expressing their displeasure over punishment meted out to its women's team, the Indian cricket board on Wednesday threatened the global sports body of pulling out of Champions Trophy next year.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday punished Indian women's team docking all six points for skipping three matches in the in the ICC championship competition against arch-rivals Pakistan between August 1 to October 31.

The decision of ICC technical committee means that Indian eves will miss out on automatic qualification for the 2017 World Cup in England, with both teams falling into the bottom four of the points table.

Indian eves were to play bilateral series with Pakistan between August 1 to October 31 as per agreement, but given the political situation between the neighbouring countries where men's teams have not played a bilateral series after Pakistan toured India at the end of 2012, the decision to forfeit matches was taken.

BCCI, though, has been comparing the two situations together but given that this series was part of the ICC event, there was hardly any doubt about the consequences of boycotting it.

Though both countries have not been playing bilateral series for a while now, they have played against each other in various ICC tournaments including the World Cup, World T20, Champions Trophy and Asia Cup.

ICC technical committee did consider written submissions from the both cricket boards before reaching the final decision.

"The technical committee was sensitive to the current state of relations between the nations of India and Pakistan, but concluded that the BCCI had not been able to establish 'acceptable reasons' for not participating in this series," the ICC release said on Wednesday.

Thakur vs Manohar

The latest threat by BCCI is yet another confrontation between its president Anurag Thakur and that of ICC chairman and his bête noire Shashank Manohar.

Going by BCCI insiders, is is not the right time to play against Pakistan when soldiers are being killed almost every day on the borders.

"Led by Manohar's leadership, ICC has developed this habit of targetting BCCI for anything and everything. How could have our women team played this series without the permission from the government? ICC is aware of it," said a BCCI official.

Saying that the Indian men's team could skip Champions Trophy in England next year, the official said, "The men's team stands in solidarity with the women's team. But before reaching that far, let ICC rethink its decision."

This latest development is many in the list of direct battles between Thakur and Manohar.

Ever since Manohar took over ICC's top post, Thakur has gone on record to slam his predecessor for dumping BCCI at the time of crisis arising out of Supreme Court ruling.

ICC's point of view is that when PCB did offer India an option of playing matches at the neutral venue, then why was that not accepted?

Meanwhile, former Indian women captain Diana Edulji also questioned the reasoning of not playing Pak "when hockey team has not been stopped from playing the neighbouring country".

"It was an ICC championship. The BCCI could have agreed to play at a neutral venue. Why sports and politics are being mixed," asked Edulji.

India and Pakistan, who last played each other at the Women's World T20 earlier this year, are scheduled to play the Asia Cup in Thailand between November 25 and December 5.

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