The fans might find the President’s box empty at the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) stadium in Nagpur for the Twenty20 International game, which is scheduled on January 29, as there is no administrator at the helm for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The VCA officials have decided to stop providing tickets for the presidential box after the BCCI’s top-post has been left vacant following the Supreme Court verdict, which saw the sacking of Anurag Thakur as President and Ajay Shirke as Secretary on January 2.
“We have a president box and not the secretary box. We are not giving tickets unless there is a board president in place,” VCA president Anand Jaiswal was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
After the SC order, the board’s meetings are managed by CEO Rahul Johri as several other office-bearers resigned or failed to make the list after new tenure rule came into being.
“There are 60-70 seats in the box. As per guidelines, we are supposed to give some tickets to the BCCI. Unless there is a president, we cannot allot tickets,” Jaiswal added.
“I have to check with my office whether we have informed the BCCI about this or not. We will have a meeting and decide what to do with this box now. We cannot take the decision today as we don’t know who will be the BCCI president in the coming days,” Jaiswal concluded.
With the cricket governing body BCCI going through lot of reformation after apex body led-Lodha Committee suggested several reforms for the cricket, the VCA has also become the first cricket association to accept the Lodha Panel reforms.