Cricket League Moves Games Outside India

[Coventina]

Source: New York Times

NEW DELHI —Cricket and politics are two of India’s fiercest passions. On Sunday, they butted heads. Terrorism was to blame.

Organizers of the Indian Premier League, a brash and lucrative new tournament scheduled to begin in less than three weeks, announced that they had been compelled to move the game out of India. With the tournament schedule overlapping with national elections, the government could not guarantee adequate security for the games, they said.

Shashank Manohar, India’s cricket chief, said in a televised news conference that the cricket board was in talks with other countries to host the tournament “because of the attitude of the government that we are not in a position to provide security.”

In an interview with a private channel, CNN-IBN, the Indian home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said elections were “unquestionably” more important than cricket and that he could not spare central paramilitary forces to guard the tournament when elections were under way.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/world/asia/23india.html?ref=world

[ohio2007]

1. They should take it to the Swat valley of Pakistan. nt

[KamaAina]

2. Well then, why didn't they just reschedule the cricket after the elections?

Hell, seeing as how cricket occupies the same psychic space on the Subcontinent as football does here, and soccer (real football) everywhere else, they might even have rescheduled the elections.

[smitra]

4. Because after May the monsoons will set in...

Making the holding of both cricket matches and elections difficult.

[Sultana]

3. Cricket

:boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring: :boring:

[paulsby]

5. as long as curling is not affected

i can sleep at night

[Bhaisahab]

6. Cricket

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

[Sultana]

7. Tea breaks

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[truebrit71]

8. Agreed!! I absolutely LOVE cricket!!!

..