The Committee of Administrators (CoA) has shot down a proposal from the management of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to depute an exclusive liaison officer for the wives (wags) of the touring Indian players.

The decision was taken at the meeting at Cricket Centre in Mumbai on January 3.

The name of Mayank Parikh, the BCCI’s logistics in-charge, was put up before the CoA but the Supreme Court-appointed administrators told the board management that there was no need for another officer when there is one, Rishikesh Upadhyaya, already travelling with the contingent. Parikh was supposed to leave Mumbai for Cape Town on January 4.

The CoA decision may have unwittingly brought to the fore differences between administrators and BCCI management but board officials said that is not true.

Apart from Anushka Sharma, Ritika, Nupur, Nikita, Radhika and Romi, the wives respectively of Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Murali Vijay, Ajinkya Rahane and Wriddhiman Saha among others are here. They all have been permitted to stay with their spouses for two weeks. The permitted time will conclude after the ongoing Newlands Test.

It was still not clear if the proposal was an initiative of the BCCI management or a request from the team management. The manager of the Indian team, Sunil Subramaniam, did not respond to a question from this paper.

What with the development coming within weeks after the recent highprofile wedding, the timing of such a proposal is interesting. It could be just a coincidence but the fact remains that such a plan was never put up for consideration before.

Had the CoA given the go-ahead, the logistics manager would have been at beck and call of the wags, whose travel itinerary, internal travel and site-seeing… all would have been taken care of by him.

For instance, the wife of X may not necessarily be interested to be at the ground for the whole day and may want to leave after her husband’s batting. Accordingly, the arrangements would have had to be made for her coming in and going out.

Such practices are apparently not unusual on cricket tours. The England team has one dedicated official to attend to the spouses. The explanation is that the family contingent of the English squad, including that of their support staff, is so huge that there is a need for an exclusive manager.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) officials say the arrangements for the family members of their players would be made before the squad left the country.

When contacted, Parikh said he had no knowledge of such a plan. But this paper can confirm that he was asked to prepare to leave for South Africa before the CoA put its foot down.

(Courtesy: Mumbai Mirror)