Sikkim Cricket Association to get Three Professional Players

Guwahati: In a positive turn of events, the Sikkim Cricket Association has been allowed to hire three professional players for Ranji Trophy by the Committee of Administrators (COA) even after the deadline to register guest players expired on September 1.

It needs to be mentioned that the Supreme Court had appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) which made this special case for Sikkim, who had earlier chosen not to opt for guest players to avoid preying player-agents who were willing to bribe them. The bitter experience had kept them away from guest players for so long but after the poor performance in Vijay Hazare tournament, the Sikkim Cricket Association changed their minds.

As per reports, the three players who have been signed are Bipul Sharma, who played for Himachal Pradesh and Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL, Gujarat medium pacer Ishwar Chaudhary and Delhi batsman Milind Kumar.

It may be noted that the SCA chief Lobzang Tenzing had earlier told that numerous ‘dalals’ (agents) hang around with various kinds of offers to sign up players.“Chances of getting corrupt were very high, he added.

Expressing concern over the poor performance of the team in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Tenzing was quoted saying that "Most of the other states are using professional players and they were making the difference in the team. Our coach also was of the view that if we keep losing than our boys will be impacted negatively. Their morale will be down. So that was the reason and BCCI has accepted our request. These players joined the team in Bhubaneshwar,”

Sources in the BCCI said that the COA-Indian board will help these new teams as they don’t have the same infrastructure as others have. Hence, when the request came from Sikkim, the COA instantly agreed. It may also be added that this will be the third time COA has changed their decisions mid-season.

Meanwhile, “BCCI has agreed to the decision of hiring of three guest players for Sikkim.

Earlier, they had to change registration rules for new team Puducherry to register players in August 2018 – where the other state associations were made to pick only players who had registered with their association for a duration of a year at least, that requirement was waived off in case of Puducherry. Later, a week ago, CoA relaxed the domicile rule for government employees’ wards, allowing kids of transferred employees to turn out for new teams easily.