Kohli mailed BCCI night before Manchester Test cancellation: Former england Captain Gower
Former England captain David Gower claims that Virat Kohli sent an email to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) explaining the situation in his team after physiotherapist Yogesh Parmar tested positive for Covid-19 on the eve of the Manchester test.
The Indian team decided not to take the field at Old Trafford, which led to the cancellation and eventual postponement of the fifth and final Test just two hours before the toss after the Covid outbreak in the visiting camp last week.
Yogesh Parmar was the fourth Indian team support staff member to contract coronavirus after head coach Ravi Shastri, bowling coach Bharat Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar.
“Wow! No one, least of all I, saw that coming. It leads us into unprecedented territories.
“I mean I know other matches have been abandoned sometimes a few balls bowled and various other circumstances but to have the thing called off at the last moment Virat Kohli e-mailed the BCCI at midnight the day before the whole sequence of events needs explaining a little bit better,” Gower told Cricket.com
“I was up there on the first morning on my way to watch Day 1 to enjoy some cricket, talk to people about the game to talk about the hospitality. But by the time I got there, of course, the situation had rather changed.”
The BCCI president Sourav Ganguly will now travel to the United Kingdom on September 22 to meet with England cricket representatives to discuss the possible rescheduling of the Manchester Test.
“The worrying thing for me is this: If the IPL was so very closely linked to this, then that to me is very disappointing because I mean sound old, crusty, but for all those people like me and dare I say, Virat the last time he was in England, he made a big point about how important Test match cricket is to him So, for all of us who like Test cricket and value it as the best part of the game, to see a Test abandoned like this was tragic,” Gower added.
