Not happening for now

MCA postpones senior team’s tour of Sri Lanka
Suhrid Barua, Pune Mirror, March 16, 2009

The Maharashtra Cricket Association has postponed its plans to send its senior team for an exposure tour of Sri Lanka later this month, after the SL board voiced its unwillingness to host the State team because of its hectic domestic cricket season. "We were supposed to undertake a trip to the Emerald Isle from March 16 till the end of this month. The tour was to comprise two three day matches and three one-day games to be played against their ‘A’ side, but the Sri Lankan board informed us of their inability to host us primarily because of their ‘busy’ domestic season which prompted us to put off the tour for the time being," said MCA Tournament Committee Chairman Riyaz Bagwan.

Interestingly, last year, MCA had sent its senior team for a similar exposure to Sri Lanka in the month of June. Given that, what was MCA’s line of thinking behind mulling a tour to Sri Lanka in March as they were in the know that their domestic cricket season would be in full swing? Bagwan says the move to facilitate a tour of Sri Lanka in March was necessitated only because of the postponement of the West Zone All-India T20 Tournament, which was scheduled to be held in the city from the last week of March to the first week of April. "
After the West Zone All-India T20 Tournament got postponed until next season, we felt that our senior team wouldn’t have much cricket to play in March, so we though that it would be a worthwhile idea to give our boys some foreign exposure as our domestic season was at its fag end, so we zeroed in on sending our team to Sri Lanka," he explains.

The MCA Tournament Committee Chairman says they are now working on the modalities on having the tour sometime in June. "The Sri Lankan domestic season will conclude in the end of April. In May, monsoon is at its peak there, and the Sri Lankan team will be going on a tour of Bangladesh around that time. We are constantly talking to our Sri Lankan counterparts and are pretty hopeful of the tour materialising in June," Bagwan exuded optimism.

The postponement of the Sri Lankan tour has meant that the state boys had to work out a hurriedly-made schedule of four practice matches (two-day affair) between Maharashtra 1 and Maharashtra 2, to be played every Wednesday and Thursday, the first of which kicked off last week when Maharashtra 1 won by virtue of their first innings lead at Poona Club.