ICC World Cup 2019: BCCI Warns ICC

The BCCI has asked the ICC to ensure that no more airplanes with political messages should fly over the ground in the remaining matches at the ICC World Cup 2019.

Earlier, over three aircraft flew over Headingley with different political messages, directed to the Indian government. The three political banners were visible during India vs Sri Lanka match at the ICC  World Cup 2019 on Saturday.

While two of the three messages involved the Kashmir dispute – “#JusticeforKashmir” and “India stop genocide & free Kashmir”, the third message read “Help end mob lynching in India”.

Rahul Johri, CEO of BCCI wrote to ECB, “We want to put on record that such incidents are unacceptable.”

The Chairman of the BCCI’s Committee of Administrators (CoA) said in a statement to ESPN Cricinfo, “These are divisive political messages which have no place in a sporting arena. So we have asked the ICC and the authorities these messages are not allowed to contaminate the game”

BCCI had written earlier, “This is completely unacceptable. We have written to the ICC, raising our concern about what happened in Headingley today. If this kind of incident is repeated in the semi-finals, it will be really unfortunate. Safety and security of our players is paramount.” 

“We are incredibly disappointed this has happened again,” the ICC statement on Saturday said.

The ICC further showed dissatisfaction with the incident occurred during the ICC World Cup 2019 and wrote, “Throughout the tournament, we have worked with local police forces around the country to prevent this type of protest occurring. After the previous incident, we were assured by West Yorkshire Police there would not be a repeat of this issue, so we are very dissatisfied it has happened again.”

According to the reports, the ICC has been working with the police in Birmingham and Manchester to ensure such incidents does not happen during the ICC World Cup 2019 semifinals.