The high intensity test series between India and England came to a tragic and controversial end when the last match had to be postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 scare at the Team India camp after head coach Ravi Shastri tested positive. However, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has now come up with a scintillating revelation that has not gone down well with many of the cricket enthusiasts around the globe.
Sourav Ganguly indeed said in an interview to the telegraph that the Indian players refused to play the test. However he refused to blame them for this decision as the situations were not favourable.
“The players refused to play but you can’t blame them. Physio Yogesh Parmar was such a close contact of the players … he mixed freely with the players and even performed their COVID-19 tests. He also used to give them a massage, he was part of their everyday lives,” Ganguly said to the Telegraph.
“The players were devastated when they came to know that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
They feared they must have contracted the disease and were dead scared,” he further added.
There was widespread confusion moments after the decision was made public. ECB wrongly published in their official statement that team India have forfeited the match and have thus ended the series accepting a 2-2 draw. However, BCCI took to their official website shortly after and revealed that they have only not been able to ‘field the team’ and their 2-1 lead is still intact. As a response, ECB soon proposed to BCCI that the 5th match should be played next year and till then, India can not be called the official winners of the series. The two boards thus came to a mutual agreement.
