CHENNAI: Almost a month after his online outburst against the Andhra Cricket Association (ACA), India batter Hanuma Vihari has been served a show-cause notice by the latter. The decision was taken during an Apex Council meeting held last week. It is learnt that the single-point agenda of the meeting was to seek clarification from the 30-year-old right-hand batter, who has played 16 matches for the country so far, by issuing the notice.
"Yes, Vihari has been issued a notice seeking his response on the issue," a member of the ACA Apex Council told this daily. He. however, clarified that the intention behind the move was to get to the root cause of the issue and resolve it to ensure another Andhra player doesn't face a similar situation in the future.
"Nobody can deny what Vihari has done for Andhra cricket. Credit should be given where it is due but had he had any issues, he should have approached the ACA instead of going online. He might be having issues and the same could have been communicated to the association. We would have tried our best to address his concerns. Now also, the aim is to understand the reasons behind his decision and fix the issues so that nobody goes through such a situation in the future," added the source.
Vihari didn't respond to a message sent to him enquiring about the notice. The source, however, confirmed that the batter has not responded to the notice so far.
Soon after Andhra lost the Ranji Trophy quarterfinal against Madhya Pradesh last month, Vihari accused the ACA of forcing him to resign from captaincy following the team's first match against Bengal. He alleged that he shouted at the 17th player, the son of a politician, who in turn asked the ACA to take action against him. "Sad part is the association thinks that players have to listen to whatever they say and players are there because of them (association). I've decided that I'll never play for Andhra where I lost my self-respect," he had posted on social media.
He also posted a letter of support from his teammates and the ACA responded to it by claiming that the players were forced to sign the letter. "Some players have complained to the Andhra Cricket Association that they were forced to sign under threats. Andhra Cricket Association will thoroughly investigate all the complaints received and report the facts to the BCCI," the association said in a statement.
The player in question, KN Prudhvi Raj, whom Vihari held responsible for his removal as the captain, had also taken to Instagram and alleged the senior cricketer of making false claims. "Hello everyone! I'm that guy, you guys are searching in the comment box, whatever you guys heard is false, no one is higher than the game and my self-respect is much bigger than anything. Personal attacks and vulgar language are unacceptable in any kind of human platform. Everyone in the team knows what happened that day," he had posted.