IPL 2019 | Rajasthan Royals cricketers made to wait outside Sawai Man Singh Stadium

The Rajasthan players had to face a lot of difficulties before the start of the IPL as they were made to wait outside the stadium in Jaipur. The entry gates were kept locked due to an alleged disturbance between the State Sports Council, which owns the stadium, and the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA). Ajinkya Rahane and some of the cricketers had gone to the stadium for training but couldn’t make into the ground for close to half an hour. The gates were locked by the sports council employees and an intervention by the franchise helped the players to go into the stadium.

“There has always been an issue of pending payments between RCA and RSSC since the time Lalit Modi was in charge of state cricket. However during the time of IPL, all payments are done by the franchise,” a senior RCA official told PTI.

 “Today’s incident was surprising since Royals have recently made a substantial payment for the maintenance of the stadium. Whenever there is IPL, the state sports council officials do these things forcing RCA to shell out more passes.”

The joint secretary of RCA Mahendra Nahar said that there were security concerns which was the reason for the delay in the opening of the gates for the players. The stadium will host the first game of the Rajasthan unit in this edition of the IPL against Kings XI Punjab on Monday.

 “It is true that the players, who had come for training, had to wait for 15-20 minutes, but it was because of some security issues,” said Nahar.

“Yesterday, some outsiders reached the practice session and created some problems. The RSSC had to take such an action after “some of the locals went inside the dressing room. The security officers wanted to set things in order before opening the gates.”