ACA claims positive progress on IPL security demands

Even though the Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi has ridiculed the safety concerns raised by the Australian Cricketers Association, the ACA claims to have made “some positive progress” in getting its players’ security demands met by the IPL organisers.

“Our security adviser Reg Dickason has been working with the IPL’s security adviser, Nicholls-Steyn. They’ve been working for a few days now on what we’ve identified as the issues that have come out of various player meetings,” Marsh told ‘Cricinfo’

“Nicholls-Steyn is aware of those and they are working through the issues and we’re making some positive progress.

It’s probably looked more positive over the last few days than what it has (before). There’s still 15 days to go before the event starts and things can happen very quickly in India, we’ve seen that over the years,” he added.

Mr. Modi had earlier dismissed the ACA’s concerns in his twitter feeds, saying the IPL would not “be dictated by players associations on where to play“.

Meanwhile, Marsh played down reports of a bust-up between current and former Australian cricketers with regards to IPL participation.

“Like just about every meeting, when you’re dealing with a difficult issue, there are different points of view and there were definitely different points of view in this particular meeting. The players were completely unified on the position that they wanted to go,” Marsh said.

“However, there was one school thinking they would only go if our security adviser, Reg Dickason who we trust, believes it’s safe to go. There was another school that said it’s a risk-and-reward type situation, would we go regardless.

We got to a position at the end of it where we all said okay, let’s put back to the IPL the things that we need so that all the players can go.

“If we can resolve those issues with them, and that is our hope, then we would expect to get to a point where our security adviser recommends that it’s safe for the players to go. If we can’t overcome these issues then the opposite is the most likely scenario. This is a decision to be made by each individual player,” he added.