The Reasons Why BCCI denied RCB's request for mixed-gender T20 Match

IPL team "RCB" had planned to conduct the mixed-gender T20 match after the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.

Even before the BCCI gave their approval, huge promotions for the game were being aired during the IPL 2019, featuring star cricketer's like Virat Kohli, Harmanpreet Kaur & Mitali Raj.

On 7th June, Friday, the Committee of Administrators (CoA) decided against giving permission as BCCI rules don’t allow contracted players to be part of exhibition games.

Past Few months, this was a trending topic - "mixed-gender T20", sadly this idea was denied, but still people want to know why?

So today, in this post, I'll share the reasons why BCCI denied RCB's request for a mixed-gender T20 match.

The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) has denied a request from IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to conduct a mixed-gender T20 exhibition match, featuring Indian captain Virat Kohli and women cricketers, including Mithali Raj & Harmanpreet Kaur.

"It was part of a promotional campaign launched by the brand's sports drink. But since our policy doesn't allow players to feature in exhibition games, we had to refuse, and hence we denied the permission for a mixed-gender t20 exhibition match," one of the BCCI officials told Sportstar late on Friday.

The franchise ran a promotional campaign titled #ChallengeAccepted. The fixtures and the date of the game weren’t mentioned during the campaign. The franchise issued a press release in April.

In the statement RCB captain, Kohli said: “Be it, men or women, cricket is one game, and I want to urge fans to break the boundaries that exist in their mind that divides the sport by gender. Equality in sports is ultimately a reflection of equality in life, and if we want a better tomorrow, then we need to say #ChallengeAccepted and start breaking down all stereotypes.”

Indian women Cricketer Harmanpreet Kaur and Mitali Raj were also quoted in the RCB statement.

“People say that women’s and men’s cricket is not equal because we are not able to face the same challenges on-field. To all those fans, I want to say that neither does the idea of facing a ball at 150 kmph daunt me nor do I worry about the size of the stadium while hitting a boundary,” - Harmanpreet Kaur.

However, the dates for the fixture weren't announced during the campaign nor later.

You can watch the promotional ad campaign here:

The audience poll for a mixed-gender T20 exhibition match

The Campaign also made it online for the sake of people's opinions. The initial launch was rcchallengeaccepted.com which now redirected to socialgoat.in.

More than 4,81,504 people voted for the Mixed-gender T20 Exhibition match on their official site.

The Top States Supporting Equality in Cricket

• Maharashtra [100981 votes]
• Telangana [66924 votes]
• Delhi [60350 votes]
• Karnataka [53039 votes]
• West Bengal [36412 votes]
• Uttar Pradesh [35775 votes]
• Rajasthan [33291 votes]
• Madhya Pradesh [27247 votes]
• Haryana [11351 votes]
• Rest of the World [11966 votes]

Summary

The only reasons why BCCI denied the RCB's request for mixed-gender T20 exhibition match was:

• It's against the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) policy.
• BCCI has a policy where a player is not allowed to play an exhibition match for any cause, and hence BCCI denied the request.