Kolkata: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Thursday accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) of 'bending backwards' to protect the interests of England on the issue of World Cup matches in Zimbabwe at the cost of other teams and demanded stern action against English Cricket Board.

Reacting to the report that ICC was planning to grant another opportunity to England and Wales Cricket Board to present new facts in this regard, BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya said here, "these are intentional delaying tactics".

England was scheduled to meet Zimbabwe at Harare today, but the match could not be played. A final decision on its status was awaited.

"We find that ICC management is bending backward to protect the interest of ECB and that too at the cost of other competitor's interest," Dalmiya said.

He said the BCCI remained silent so far because, "We wanted an amicable solution and granted sufficient time to ICC to sort out the problem. Being a competitor placed in the same group as England, we were put to a lot of disadvantage.

"The intention of ECB appears to be intentional delay to pursue a 'wait and watch' policy to see the result of other group matches so that it could decide whether to go and play in Harare or skip it and still qualify for the super six."

Dalmiya, who shot off a letter to ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed during the day, demanded stern action like deduction of an additional four points from England's kitty and withholding its guarantee money if Zimbabwe, which had already hosted one World Cup match, was considered safe.

The BCCI president in his letter to ICC gave two days time to it take a final decision on the 'highly sensitive' matter, while suggesting five possible steps.

Dalmiya questioned the unnecessary delay by the ICC in coming to a decision, after one taken by the ICC executive board.

He stressed that all competitors were duty bound to play all matches as per fixtures and there was no scope either to put on hold or postpone or defer and/or reschedule any match on the basis of speculative assumptions.

Dalmiya said that if the issue was only due to security concerns then the Indian Board would have supported it, but "in the garb of security the decision cannot be delayed so long".

"The ICC management is helping the cause of ECB by allowing repeated indulgence," Dalmiya said.

He warned that due to the delay a serious problem might creep in as trouble-makers in Zimbabwe would be induced to send hollow threats to players and Boards of other teams in the group creating total chaos.

Dalmiya reiterated the stand of the Indian Board of playing its match in Zimbabwe, but refused to spell out the next course of action if ICC failed to take a final decision by February 15 saying, "action will be decided after seeing the response of the world body".

Extras:
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Zimbabwe warns ECB of dire consequences for boycott