Thaindian News

London, March 22 (IANS) Middlesex County Club Monday decided not to sign up middle-order batsman Yuvraj Singh for their Twenty20 Cup campaign despite having a signed approval from the Indian on his availability.
Vinny Codrington, Middlesex’s chief executive, said the decision was taken after it was found that the Indian cricket board had scheduled an Asia Cup during that period.

“We can today announce that the club has officially advised representatives acting on behalf of Yuvraj Singh that we will not be signing him for Middlesex in this season’s Friends Provident T20 campaign,” Codrington wrote on the club’s website.

“We had received a signed contract from Yuvraj confirming that he was playing for us. We had also received full approval from his agent as to the terms of our agreement with Yuvraj, we had received full approval from a prominent member of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as to Yuvraj’s signing, and we had even agreed what squad number he would be sporting for the Panthers this year,” he said.

“We were quite rightly awaiting written approval from the BCCI before formally announcing the signing to members at large and to the UK media, which unfortunately despite much chasing on our part was never forthcoming. After receiving Yuvraj’s signed contract back, we were then notified by the BCCI that they had arranged an Asia Cup tournament in June, which meant that Yuvraj would in all likelihood not be available for all of our five home T20 matches at Lord’s, which though far from ideal, we considered still worth our while bringing him over,” said Codrington.

He went on to add that the BCCI were also looking to arrange a pre-Asia Cup training camp and failed to specify the dates, impacting Yuvraj’s availability.

“We finally learnt earlier this week, only by reading the news on a third party website however, that the BCCI have now organised a triangular tournament between themselves, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, in Zimbabwe, between the 28th May and the 13th June - therein making Yuvraj unavailable for Middlesex in any of our T20 matches at Lord’s in June,” said Codrington.

“Calls to the BCCI to seek clarification on this point have proved fruitless, however we have since been advised that Yuvraj will be required to represent India in this tournament, therein leaving us in an untenable position, leading to us make the decision to notify Yuvraj Singh’s representatives that we will not be pursuing our interest in bringing him to Lord’s,” he added.