Sikkim Hosts Men’s Under 23 One Day Trophy 2019-20
Sikkim hosts the Men’s Under 23 One Day Trophy 2019-20 which is being held at Odisha from 31st October. This is for the first time the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has given the role of hosting to Sikkim. The total of 45 matches will be played during this tournament with 10 teams named Sikkim, Chandigarh, Assam, Puducherry, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Bihar. All the matches will be played in KIIT Cricket Stadium, DRIEMS Cricket Ground, Vikash Cricket Stadium and Ravenshaw Cricket Ground of Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack within the span of 28 days.
As Sikkim is hosting any BCCI tournaments for the first time so there are many things to be taken care of and many things to be learned and for the same Cricket Operations Manager– Afzal Hussain and Logistics Manager – Mayelmit Lepcha went to the home base which is KIIT University, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha and working on various matters from the last one month. During the past month the President, Secretary, and other executives of Sikkim Cricket Association (SICA) have visited a base couple of times to check the arrangements and K. V. P. Rao (AGM- Cricket Operations, BCCI) also visited KIITS and had several meetings with the management and SICA officials. He trained the SICA official of how to manage various things that need to be taken care such as fixtures, traveling plan details of the visiting teams, arranging training and practice facilities of all the teams, match balls, Stumps, booking hotels for the visiting teams and match officials, catering during the match days for the teams and match officials and food during the non-match days for the teams and officials, managing equipment for video analysts; scorers; match referee.
It is an honor for Sikkim Cricket Association that the BCCI has given such a responsibility of hosting a tournament and also having confidence in SICA. SICA has appointed Nayan Tshering Bhutia (Member of SICA) as the Co-ordinator for the tournament. Hopefully, Sikkim might be hosting few more tournaments this season.