Ahmedabad: If you are a cricketer in India, it is never advisable to ruffle the Board of Control for India's feathers. But Bengal pacer Ashok Dinda seems to have done just that and now, according to sources, the Board is quite peeved with him and his attitude is under the scanner.
Dinda, who was asked to join the India squad as a standby for Ishant Sharma, has returned to Calcutta and will be playing Bengal's Ranji Trophy home game against Gujarat, which begins at the Eden, on Saturday.
Apparently, such a decision has been taken so that the player doesn't sit idle and gets some vital match practice instead. But there's a tale within the tale.
On Tuesday, Dinda was on his way back from Chandigarh, where he represented Bengal in the Ranji Trophy game against Punjab, when he got the news that he would have to rush to Ahmedabad to join the squad.
That was in the afternoon and Dinda was in Delhi waiting for his connecting flight back to Calcutta. While the Board's brief was to join the Indian squad immediately, Dinda chose to fly back home and go to Ahmedabad on the next day 'Wednesday.
"He could have easily gone straight to Ahmedabad from Delhi… Or maybe he could have taken the early morning flight from Delhi instead of going back to Calcutta. Arranging tickets wouldn't have been a problem as BCCI would have taken care of that. But his delayed arrival in Ahmedabad meant he couldn't attend practice on Wednesday… That has not gone down well with the BCCI brass," a well-placed source told The Telegraph on Thursday.
According to another source, it was because of Dinda's wrong attitude that the BCCI named him as a standby, otherwise they were mulling to make him the 16th member of the squad.
One wonders why Dinda did such a thing. From Delhi, there are at least seven flights from the afternoon (when he got the news) till 8.30, to reach Ahmedabad. Instead, the pacer took a flight from Calcutta on the next day.
Moreover, he didn't even take the first flight from Calcutta to Ahmedabad, which is at 7.25am. He boarded the 11am flight. While the earlier one takes a little longer to reach Ahmedabad as it goes via Jaipur, the later is a direct flight.
The Indian team, on Wednesday, practised from 9am and wrapped up by 12.30pm. Dinda reached the venue of India's opening Test of the series well after that.