India ignite dispute by skipping the ICC Awards

The International Cricket Council's (ICC) award ceremony was staged in London on Monday night. The Englishmen took the spotlight; however, there were several nominations from the Indian side as well, which, to the dismay of many, opted to skip the ceremony, with their manager citing a late invitation as the reason behind the mismanagement.

Indian Skipper MS Dhoni had won the Spirit of Cricket Award this year for his decision to give English batsman Ian Bell another chance to bat during the second Test at Trent Bridge, but none of the Indian player or officials were present in the ceremony, who could collect MS Dhoni’s Award.

"We are disappointed," Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive shared. "They have had a great year [before the England series] and it was an occasion to celebrate. It was a missed opportunity."

Interestingly, in 2009 the ICC awards ceremony was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, and despite being there, MS Dhoni did not collect his ICC award for Cricketer of the year.

In 2010, the ICC award ceremony was scheduled in Bangalore and the Indian team attended the ceremony along with the Board of Control for Cricket in India's high brass, including N Srinivasan, the then secretary and now president.

According to ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat, India also missed out on attracting more partisans following the dreadful tour of England where they lost both Test and ODI series. It was a good occasion to illustrate their sporting temperament despite them losing on this tour.

Shivlal Yadav, the Indian team manager revealed that he received a call from ICC on Monday afternoon. He added that he had already told the boys that it was a holiday. Therefore, he could not ask his players to suddenly alter their schedule. Consequently he told ICC that they should not reserve a table for them.

The ICC sent a fresh e-mail to Srinivasan’s office reminding him about the awards and thereafter extending another invitation for the Indians to attend the ceremony.

"We hold the awards' night at a time convenient for the cricketers," Lorgat said. "When we sat earlier in the year to decide on the dates for this year's awards, the choice was between London and Colombo. But we felt that England-India would be a marquee series and therefore [it would be] apt to host it in London."