The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) secretary Richard Gould has written to his counterpart, BCCI secretary Jay Shah, proposing to bring two national disability teams — one for visually impaired (blind) and one combined (physically challenged, intellectually challenged and hearing impaired) team — to help popularise the sport among the communities. Currently, in India, there is a Differently Abled Cricket Council of India (DCCI), which is a sub-committee of the BCCI but the Indian board independently doesn’t organise any tournaments.
There will be some discussions on the sidelines of the ICC Annual conference in Colombo where Gould is supposed to participate in the Chief Executives Meet.
“We propose boards operate two international teams — a blind XI as a standalone format and then a pan-disability format with squads consisting of deaf, intellectually impaired and physically disabled cricketers. We would be keen and willing to host the inaugural pan-disability tournament involving our five nations in 2025. The ICC are keen to show collective support for this approach to ensure any steps are member driven,” Gould wrote in a letter, also addressed to Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley, PCB COO Salman Naseer, and CSA CEO Phletsi Moseki. A copy of the letter is with PTI.
In fact, Gould has addressed that the “global disability cricket is unstructured, unregulated and often unsupported”.
“There are many different codes of disability cricket — blind, deaf, intellectual impairment and physical disability and there has been widespread lack of co-ordination and strategy that sits across all four.
“This has not been an area of sport we have collectively prioritised and although financial restraints are felt as prevalently now as ever, now is the time for us to come together to turbocharge the disability game,” Gould further wrote.
Currently there are 1.3 billion (130 crore) people with various disabilities living globally and Gould believes that it is an untapped market that needs to be reached.
It is learnt that Ravi Chauhan, the boss of DCCI, will be in Sri Lanka to take part in discussions as he has been the bridge between his committee and BCCI.
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