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After initial apprehension, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have now decided to send the men's and women's team to the Asian Games in China, which has a T20I tournament, according to a report by a leading news publication.
With the mega Asiad set to take place around the time of the ODI World Cup in India, the men's B squad will make the flight to Hangzhou, while the first team of the women's, led by Harmanpreet Kaur, will be a part of the quadrennial event.
The Asian Games is scheduled to be held from September 23 to October 8, while the 50-over tournament runs from October 5 to November 23. The BCCI will reportedly forward a list of players to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) before June 30.
The BCCI had earlier refrained from sending their men’s and women’s teams to the continental event. “We have entries in all sports except one – cricket (team) isn’t going,” India’s chef de mission for the Asian Games, Bhupender Bajwa had told The Indian Express earlier. “They said they are preoccupied. We sent around 3-4 emails to them but when we had to send entries to the organisers, they said they won’t go.”
This will also not be the first time that the BCCI will be fielding two national teams. In 1998, one team participated in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur while another faced Pakistan in the Sahara Cup. More recently in 2021, Shikhar Dhawan captained a second-string side on a white-ball series against Sri Lanka while the other team, captained by Virat Kohli, was in the UK for a Test series against England.
Meanwhile, Cricket was a part of two editions of the Asian Games — in 2010 and in 2014. On both occasions, India did not send a team to the multi-sport event. After being left out of the 2018 Asiad in Jakarta, cricket has returned for the Hangzhou Games, which will take place a year after it was initially supposed to but was postponed due to China’s zero-Covid policy.
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