BCCI Suspends U19 Cooch Behar Trophy In Pune Due To Increase In COVID Cases In Maharashtra

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has postponed the Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy tournament, currently underway in Pune, due to the increase in the COVID cases in Maharashtra. Not only this, but the decision was also influenced by the detection of cases of infection among the participating teams.

The Cooch Behar U19 Trophy is currently in the quarter-finals stage which was to kick off on Tuesday (January 11). Multiple sources in the BCCI as well as Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) have confirmed that the tournament had to be put off because of a rapidly increasing number of Covid cases.

Maharashtra has recorded over 40,000 new cases in the last 24 hours and one BCCI official stated that this was the primary reason for the postponement of the tournament as a precautionary measure.

Decision Made Due To Players Getting Infected By COVID In Multiple Teams

Cricbuzz reported that apart from rising COVID cases in the state, there were multiple cases reported in participating teams, which led to officials deciding to suspend the tournament for time being.

The Mumbai team, which qualified for the quarter-finals, has had a player, infected, and had to be isolated just after their pre-quarter-finals game. Similar cases were also found in Saurashtra, which was knocked out of the competition in the pre-quarterfinal stage. It was reported that in the Mumbai team alone five players and a member of the support staff, were infected.

The BCCI and MCA officials have claimed to have done everything possible to keep the tournament afloat and had devoted floors in the hotels for each team but it later emerged that cases got pervaded into the sides as the situation worsened. One official has said that cases were detected among most teams forcing the BCCI to call it off.

Apart from Mumbai, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Vidarbha, Bengal, Haryana and hosts Maharashtra qualified for the last-eight stage and were to be in action from Tuesday.

The third wave of COVID has begun in the country buoyed by the new COVID Omicron variant as India has reported more than 1.5 lakh cases in the last 24 hours. Such numbers are the reason why BCCI recently postponed the Ranji Trophy and Col CK Nayudu Trophy which were scheduled to begin this month.

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