Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Cricket Association has assured to initiate steps to stop recurrence of power disruption during matches.
In its response to the show cause notice issued by the Odisha government over the floodlight malfunction during the India-England ODI at Barabati Stadium on February 9, OCA president Pankaj Lochan Mohanty said the OCA will take steps to stop repetition of such an incident.
Notably, the second ODI between the two countries was disrupted for around 30 minutes as floodlights in one of the towers were not functioning. Embarrassed over the issue, the state government on February 10 issued a show cause notice to the OCA seeking a reply within 10 days.
“To ensure that such an incident does not happen again during such important matches, we have decided to deploy two generator sets to supply power to each floodlight,” Mohanty said on Sunday.
His predecessor Sanjay Behera had told reporters earlier that the backup generators could not reach the floodlight tower immediately because the players’ bus was parked near it.
“The driver was not in the bus and he was called up and asked to remove the vehicle after which the generators could reach the tower and the power was restored,” Behera had said.
Mohanty said that after that ODI, another important match was held till 1.30 am and there was no disturbance.
“The BCCI has not sought any report in this matter,” the new OCA chief said.
