New Delhi, Nov 13: Concerned over incidents of unruly crowd behaviour in three centres of the current India-West Indies one-day series and the ICC's threat to withdraw international status of such venues, a rattled Indian cricket board today directed the staging centres of the remaining four one-dayers to take effective security measures to check rogue elements. Although the board is maintaining that there is no question mark over the remainder of the series, it has asked the staging centres to take all possible precautionary measures to avoid crowd trouble which has marred all the three matches so far.
As part of the measures additional police force will be deployed and close circuit televisions installed at the stadiums in Ahmedabad, Baroda, Jodhpur and Vijayawada – the venues for the remaining matches, board secretary S K Nair told today. The board also wants the local organisers to ensure that the police properly search each spectator so that none could enter with objects like bottles and firecrackers which could be used as potential missiles.
The International Cricket Council's threat to withdraw international status from venues which fail to meet security guidelines has put the board under more pressure as it made a desperate attempt to restore cricketing sanity. Bureau Report