The CEO of International Cricket Council (ICC) Dave Richardson believes the present impasse between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will be resolved soon.
According to WADA’s revised ‘Code’ for signatories that came into effect in this April, BCCI has to comply with National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) but a private agency oversees the anti-doping norms of BCCI at present.
Talking about this matter, the ICC CEO claimed on Wednesday that they are trying to facilitate dialogue between the BCCI and WADA and they are hopeful to resolve it quickly.
Richardson quoted, “ICC is trying to facilitate a dialogue between WADA and the BCCI. There is a willingness on the part of BCCI to resolve the situation with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). I think that can be resolved quite quickly. BCCI is not reluctant to do dope testing, but they are not ready to send samples to NADA.”
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This issue can affect ICC’s dream to feature in the future Olympics. However, ICC is not just confident to resolve this issue in quickly, they are also confident to feature in the 2028 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles.
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While almost every cricketing member is strongly supporting cricket’s inclusion in the Olympics, BCCI is still against this thought. However, Richardson is confident that it will be resolved soon.
Richardson said, “As far as Olympics are concerned, we have the ambition of getting cricket into Olympics by 2028, but that’s easier said than done. We need to convince the IOC itself to have cricket — 103 out of 104 members are strongly behind the decision. There are some issues between BCCI and IOA and I am confident they can be resolved.”
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Also, recently ICC has confirmed that they have submitted a bid to include women’s cricket in 2022 Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Birmingham. While the decision will come in next year, Richardson strongly hopes on cricket’s inclusion in the next CWG.
The ICC CEO said, “We think cricket and CWG is a good fit. It affords women’s cricket a much bigger market. From CWG point of view, women’s sport is a huge agenda for them and this will give them an opportunity to tap into a big cricketing market. CWG organisers need to go through their decision-making process and we’ll hear about their decision only next year.”