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Players want access to security details - SACA

Players from South Africa have written to their IPL franchises asking for access to security reports for the 2010 tournament, according to Tony Irish

Nagraj Gollapudi
02-Feb-2010
Players from South Africa involved in the IPL have written to their franchises asking for access to security reports for the 2010 tournament and have requested that they be made available to "their chosen representatives", according to Tony Irish, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers' Association. He added that England, New Zealand and Australian players were also taking the same step.
Players' associations from Australia and New Zealand had also approached the IPL, asking the league for details about its security plans, but were rebuffed, with Lalit Modi saying the IPL did not recognise such bodies and would only deal directly with the various national boards.
"If there is a threat being made against Australian players and South Africans are playing alongside them, then it could be a threat to them too. That could be a problem," Irish told Cricinfo. "We don't know whether that is a problem or not unless we see the security plans.
"We have a very strict process that we follow on security where we do a threat assessment beforehand and then we are given access to the security plans. We make sure that security plans are adequate to cover any threats that exists. That is all done by CSA and SACA along with the security consultants. I don't want to go into the specifics of the threat but there is a threat-level report which says we do need to review the security plans carefully for the event. All we want to do is have access to the report so we can give the players the peace of mind that everything is in place. That is reasonable."
Irish said that if the IPL refused to reveal its security plans then the players would need to take individual decisions about their participation. "There are a lot of players who will have great reservations," he said. "I cannot commit if players will not come because it will come down to an individual's choice.
"We all want a safe and successful IPL. But it just seems strange because the IPL doesn't want to deal with the players' associations and that prevents us from working together to try and ensure the same objective."

Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at Cricinfo