It was an evening, which was a lack of clarity for confusion, anarchy, rumors and Royal Challengers Bangalore players and employees, when the IPL game was closed in Dharamasala, the team’s director of the team’s cricket Moe’s team said on Friday that he did not expect that he was not expecting to resolve the struggle soon. RCB players were returning to their hotel by team after a practice session, when they left the images of Punjab Kings and Delhi Capital cricketers at Dharamasala Stadium in the dark on 8 May.
The RCB was scheduled to play the Lucknow super veterans on 9 May, the day the IPL was suspended for a week due to the India-Pakistan military conflict.
The performance director of the former England men’s team, Bobat, told RCB Bold Diaries, “Yes, quite chaotic. Tried to remain quite calm and tried to get more information from the BCCI and tried to communicate with clarity.”
“It was a very incidental evening. We practiced a day before the Lucknow game. And, then, in fact on the way back, many people were watching their phones, Punjab vs. Delhi Capital Games.
“And then we saw that the floodlights were out and the players came out of the field. We were not sure what was going on, and only when we came back to the hotel, we understood what was happening,” he said.
Bobat said that the team came to know only about the IPL suspension only the next day. His initial idea was that the tournament would be closed.
“So that evening a lot of rumors, a lot of chats and the next morning we came to know that our game was not happening and the competition was suspended for a period.
“Our initial belief was that the competition would be closed for some time. You do not expect such conflict to resolve yourself, as it was.” He said that RCB was conscious of the fact that both the players, both Indians and abroad, would like to return to the protection of their homes, given the deteriorating situation.
“We were quite keen to send the players home because in fact (this) was a good chance for them to be a break. So for Indian players, this is relatively straightforward.
“With foreign players, themselves and (head coaches) Andy (Flower) made them sit down and talked to them and said,” Look, what is your priority? ” And many of them said that ‘Look we want to go home because it is a period of uncertainty, but was very committed, and if we need to come back we will come back. “Refusing foreign players, who had left, had a much bigger task than sending them back to their respective countries, and it came with security assurance, and a lot of contacts with the related cricket boards.
“We came to know on Monday evening that the tournament was back. Therefore, throughout the night we were trying to find out as much security details as we needed to communicate for the players.
“We took a quick decision to communicate with Indian players when we wanted them back. We also needed to contact some foreign governing bodies, ECB, Cricket Australia, Cricket South Africa and West Indies because you need to know what effect they are going to have.
He said, “I made a video call with all foreign players, took them through safety details, schedule, how RCB was going to take care of them, which is really important for them because we want them to feel safe and happy here,” he said.
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