Unveiling Of Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy Postponed Due To Ahmedabad Air Crash

Cricket fans always look for an English summer to keep them excited for a period around five months. This season, a major event of the English Summer was the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final that South Africa won, bringing down the mighty Australians at the home of cricket, the Lord’s cricket ground. Kudos to skipper Temba Bavuma, Kagiso Rabada and Alden Markram the rainbow nation staged a second innings comeback to trounce the Aussies. While the WTC final riveted attention on both teams, another burning topic the cricket fraternity in India is glued onto is the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) decision — after consulting the BCCI — to retire the Pataudi Trophy and rename the England-India Test series after Jimmy Anderson and Sachin Tendulkar, both the nation’s outstanding cricketers who dominated the scene for over two decades. The unveiling of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy has been put off because of the Ahmedabad air crash victims. The trophy will be unveiled a few days before the first day of the first Test at Headingley, Leeds on June 20. A cross section of the cricketing fraternity in India is unhappy with the change, but the argument is that the present generation has seen and taken a thrill at the fantastic displays with the bat and ball by Tendulkar and Anderson and the ECB decision was most appropriate in keeping with the times. Perhaps advised by a few legends of Indian cricket the BCCI, without interfering with the ECB call, has asked if it can name one of the individual awards and continue the legacy of Pataudi-Iftikhar Ali Khan and Mansur Ali Khan, both well known in English and Indian cricket.