Indian team's two-day conditioning camp for the upcoming Pakistan series, beginning November 2, was on Thursday, shifted to the Eden Gardens with the BCCI agreeing to defer a Ranji Trophy match that was clashing with the camp.
The camp was earlier scheduled to be staged at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club, with the Eden slated to host the Bengal-Hyderabad Ranji Trophy elite division outing from November 3-6.
"Eden has superb world class facilities including floodlights and indoor practice arrangements, which were not there at the CC&FC," Cricket Association of Bengal president Prasun Mukherjee said.
"We were earlier forced to opt for the CC&FC as Eden was not available.
"But I managed to convince the BCCI that the camp should be held at the Eden so as to give the Indian players the very best of infrastructural support before such an important series."
In the morning, Mukherjee, along with former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly and curator Kalyan Mitra, inspected the facilities at the CC&FC.
"We felt that the camp would be in jeopardy in case of rains as CC&FC did not have indoor practice facilities. So, I requested the Board to push back the Ranji match by a day to accommodate the camp at the Eden," Mukherjee said.
Another reason was that despite three of the five upcoming Indo-Pak ODIs being day and night affairs, the Indian cricketers would have had to do with day nets only, as CC&FC had no floodlights.
The BCCI, he said, gave the green signal for shifting the venue after speaking to Hyderabad Cricket Association, which agreed to play the match from November 4-7.
As per the revised arrangements, now the Hyderabad team would have their nets at the CC&FC on November 3.
