We have seen a lot of entertaining cricket matches and incidents in 2018. While we have experienced some great unforgettable cricket matches, some big controversies also took the centre stage of the game.
Here we are discussing the top six big controversies in international cricket in 2018 which have hugely affected the positive nature of the game.
6. Post World T20 fiasco in Indian women’s cricket team
The former Indian men’s cricketer Ramesh Powar was appointed as the head coach Indian women’s cricket team on 14 August 2018 and he had the contract till the end of November 2018. Under his very short-term, Indian women’s cricket team showed some improving performances on the field, including their dominating group stage performances in the ICC WWT20 where they won every game.
However, everything was changed since the national team lost the semi-final of 2018 ICC WWT20 against England women. While the whole nation was shocked on in-form Mithali Raj’s exclusion from the playing XI for the semi-final encounter, Raj wrote a letter to the BCCI demanding justice after lashing out on the head coach Ramesh Powar and Committee of Administrators (CoA) member Diana Edulji for being biased towards her.
On the other hand, Powar revealed that he was saddened by Raj’s attitude who threatened to announce retirement. Later, Powar didn’t get a new offer for his contract extension while the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) started to find the new head coach.
The drama continues after the T20I skipper Harmanpreet Kaur and the vice-captain Smriti Mandhana wrote e-mails to the BCCI where they defended Powar and requested to bring back him for the head coach role to make a strong future for the nation.
CoA member Diana Edulji had also the same voice of Kaur and Mandhana while the CoA chief Vinod Rai claimed that they couldn’t bring back him directly since the advertisement had been published already. However, Powar was available to re-apply for that post and he did that too.
After the conclusion of the interview round of the shortlisted candidate, where Ramesh Powar also gave his interview, BCCI selected WV Raman as the new head coach of the team on December 21 after Gary Kirsten was found in the trap of Conflict of Interest as per the BCCI constitution.
The native cricket experts were divided into two sides – one group was supporting Mithali Raj and others were supporting Powar and the team management.
Now, Mithali Raj has returned to the ODI and T20I squads while Kaur and Mandhana have retained their spots in both the limited-overs formats.
