‘Felt like the tournament was over’: RCB’s Mo Bobat on IPL chaos during India-Pakistan conflict

Royal Challengers Bengaluru players and staff experienced a chaotic evening on May 8 when the IPL game in Dharamsala was called off due to India-Pakistan military conflict, as revealed by team's Director of Cricket Mo Babat on Friday. The team was returning from practice when they learned about the suspension of IPL for a week, which affected their scheduled match against Lucknow Super Giants on May 9.

The RCB team first noticed something was wrong when they saw Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals players leaving the Dharamsala stadium in darkness while watching on their phones during their bus ride back to the hotel.

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"Yes, quite chaotic. Tried to stay quite calm and tried to get as much information from the BCCI as possible and try to communicate with clarity," said Bobat, who previously served as England men's team performance director.




"It was a pretty eventful evening. We practiced the day before the Lucknow game. And, then, actually on the bus on the way back, a lot of the guys were watching the game on their phones, the Punjab vs Delhi Capitals game. And then we saw the floodlights had gone out and the players had come off the field. We were not too sure what was going on, and only when we got back to the hotel we kind of got a proper sense of what was happening."

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The team learned about the tournament's suspension the following morning, initially believing it might be called off completely.

"So that evening a lot of rumours, a lot of chat and the next morning we found out that our game wasn't taking place and the competition had been suspended for a period. Our initial impression was that the competition would be called off for a period of time. You don't expect a conflict like that to resolve itself, as it did."

The team management prioritised player safety, focusing on arranging their return home during the uncertain period.



"We were quite keen to send the players home because actually a good chance for them to have a break. So for the Indian players, that's relatively straightforward. With the overseas players, myself and Andy sat them down and spoke to them all and said, 'Look, what is your preference?' and a lot of them said 'look we'd like to go home because it's a period of uncertainty but were very committed, and if we need to come back we'll come back.'"

The process of bringing back overseas players proved more challenging than sending them home, requiring security assurances and coordination with various cricket boards.

"We found out Monday evening that the tournament is back on. So, overnight we were trying to find out as much security detail as possible because we needed to communicate that to the players. We made a quick decision to communicate to the Indian players about when we wanted them back. We also needed to liaise with some of the overseas governing bodies, the ECB, Cricket Australia, Cricket South Africa and West Indies because you need to know what impact it's going to have on them."




"I lined up video calls with all of the overseas players, took them through the security detail, schedule, about how RCB were going to look after them, which is really important for them to understand because we want them to feel safe and happy here."
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