ICC Cricket World Cup 2019: Working with authorities on increasing vigilance, says ICC CEO David Richardson

ICC Chief Executive David Richardson said that the global body is working with the authorities to ensure that there are no further untoward incident like the clash between Afghanistan and Pakistan fans during a World Cup match in Leeds on Saturday. [caption id=“attachment_4447085” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of David Richardson. Reuters[/caption] Two persons were evicted from the stadium after fans of both countries clashed outside the stadium, requiring intervention from the Yorkshire Police. This was after an aircraft flew over the Headingly Stadium with a "Free Balochistan" banner . Balochistan is the largest province in Pakistan in terms of land area and it borders to the north of Afghanistan. Richardson said that ICC is in process of upping the security and ensure no such political slogans are raised at the ground. “We are working with various security teams to beef up the security. Obviously, it is very difficult to get hold of every person present at the ground. But our security team would be looking for any person, who is trying to raise any political slogan or banner,” Richardson told mediapersons during a brief interaction. Meanwhile, ICC has asked the curators not to produce belters. The tracks on offer in the ongoing World Cup have not exactly been batting belters and that’s exactly what the curators were told before the start of the tournament, said Richardson. English pitches over the years have been traditionally batsmen-friendly with the World Cup hosts producing tall scores but the current edition has seen scores of 265-270 proving to be challenging for the batsmen. “We didn’t have any specific instruction for the curators. All that was told to them was to prepare firm even paced wickets,” Richardson said. “We didn’t want it to be exactly batting tracks and there should be something for the bowlers. Also a bit of turn on offer for spinners,” said the former Proteas wicketkeeper. That the wickets are not loaded in favour of batsmen was something that England captain Eoin Morgan and opener Jonny Bairstow acknowledged on various forums. Asked about the slowish tracks at Southampton and Manchester, where India’s batting line-up struggled, Richardson termed it more about weather conditions that led to wickets being a bit slow. In fact, India captain Virat Kohli on Saturday said that he felt that the track at Manchester started deteriorating as he was batting. The Sunday’s match between India and England game has been billed as ‘One Day 4 Children’ as part of ICC’s tie-up with the UNICEF.

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Some of ICC’s sponsors like UBER and booking.com will be donating to the fund for each boundary scored and wickets taken respectively. The funds will be used for children’s education. For all the latest news, opinions and analysis from ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, click here