India not sending a team to Asian Games!!!

With so much debate about Cricket, possibly being a sport in Olympics 2020 and Adam Gilchrist putting his weight behind the same, it was considered that it was not long before we could actually see Cricket on a global platform. With IPL being such a success, it has opened the doors for the newest and shortest version to be showcased to the world.

With the ongoing saga between them and Lalit Modi on the ruckus that has been the administration of IPL, BCCI would have been well off without this controversy. BCCI, presently has a lot on its plate as they have to deal with WADA, Lalit Modi and most of all, its relations with its players

The relations between BCCI and players seems to have reached a stage where they don't trust each other after the T20 World Cup in West Indies. By now its pretty clear that BCCI did not want to take the blame for the scheduling debacle. So they conveniently served show cause notices to the players who were involved in the pub incident to deviate the attention being thrown on them and it provided the easiest escape route from the prying eyes of media

Coming back to the actual topic, its a perennial issue in sports to choose between events. Not so long ago, USA coach was peeved with Pete Sampras for not appearing in Davis Cups. Sampras justified himself by stating that he wanted to remain fit for the ATP tournaments. Similar thing happened in Australia too, when Hewitt questioned the commitment of Phillipoussis to the Davis Cup cause

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With the BCCI stating that they would not send a team to the Asian Games scheduled to be held from November 12th to November 27th, it has caused quite an outrage in India as to how they are involved only in making money, which actually is not off the mark. They stated that they would like to concentrate on the international games instead

I, for one actually support the decision as I feel what they say is right and also the fact that the players themselves don't seem too keen to participating. Well its not the fact that they would not get any money from this that can augment the argument of the naysayers. Well I support this decision because the format being played is T20, which would not aid the preparations for the World Cup in any manner. If for a matter of jingoistic patriotism, we send a team over and they end up spoiling their games and thus destroying their chances at the World Cup. Another area of concern would be the fact that a medal can be taken for granted in the sport and once we go to Asiad, people would demand Sachin Tendulkar to step up to the cause of the nation. Playing Hong Kong and teams of their ilk can never suffice for practice for playing international teams. The country Vs acclaim is a argument that is never going to end

Well for the people who are on the other end, there is whole set of arguments too. Scheduled in mid-November, it is far away from any International fixure on FTP for India. BCCI as it is, is obsessed with the No 1 ranking in Test cricket. So it is trying to get Australia to get to play 2 Tests and 3 ODI's instead of 7 ODI's. A small matter of clutch of T20 matches will not any harm, three months prior to the World Cup

People can also hark back to 1998 when India was actually playing international game, when they sent two teams to Toronto and Kuala Lumpur for the Commonwealth games. They met with disastrous results, as they lost 4-1 and did not even qualify for the semi-finals in the games. England did not participate in the games then citing that it clashed with the end of County season for them