Player associations upset with IPL over security

South African players joined their counterparts from Australia and New Zealand by raising concerns over players’ security during Indian Premier League (IPL). Tony Irish, the chief executive of South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) said, “If there is a threat being made against Australian players and South Africans are playing alongside them, then it could be a threat to them too. That could be a problem. We don’t know whether that is a problem or not unless we see the security plans.”

The issue was earlier raised by Australian Cricketer’s Association (ACA) and New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association, however IPL Chairman and Commissioner Lalit Modi rejected the request saying that IPL does not recognize these associations and would only deal directly with the national cricket boards.

Surprisingly the timing of the SACA to raise the issue is surprising since only a day before the touring South African team Captain Graeme Smith said he enjoys travelling to India and there is no feel of insecurity. Irish said, “We have a very strict process that we follow on security where we do a threat assessment beforehand and then we are given access to the security plans. We make sure that security plans are adequate to cover any threats that exists. That is all done by CSA and SACA along with the security consultants. I don’t want to go into the specifics of the threat but there is a threat-level report which says we do need to review the security plans carefully for the event. All we want to do is have access to the report so we can give the players the peace of mind that everything is in place. That is reasonable.”

ACA chief executive Paul Marsh had said, “We hope common sense prevails and the IPL provides us with access to these plans because if we are unable to assess the event’s security plans, we simply won’t be able to recommend to our players that we believe it’s safe to play in this year’s IPL.” His New Zealand counterpart Heath Mill said, “We have already approached the IPL through FICA and Tim May and the players have written to their franchises. Unfortunately, the IPL will not engage us or work with us on the issue which is frustrating for us and the players.”