Visa issues came back to haunt the visiting England cricket team again as their young leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed was stopped from entering India, following England's Abu Dhabi visit. The spinner was stopped at the Hirasar Airport in Rajkot for more than 2 hours on Monday, as he possessed the wrong paperwork.
As reported by a leading news website, Ahmed had a single entry Visa to India, hence, he was not allowed to check out with the rest of the team. As per the single entry visa, an individual cannot re-enter the country after leaving it once. Due to the long break between the second and third Test, the English cricket team had decided to fly back to Abu Dhabi and spend time with their families.
However, a short-term solution was found and Rehan was allowed to enter, following more than a 2-hour delay, but the English authorities have been asked to process a new visa soon.
“The England team has been advised to process the visa again which will be happening in the next two days. The player was allowed to enter the country with the rest of the team and he will be appearing in practice on Tuesday,” a BCCI official said.
This is not the first time that an England cricketer faced Visa issues. Earlier, Shoaib Bashir missed the first Test against India after there was a delay in his Visa. He arrived on the fourth day of the first Test and hence, eventually, made his debut in the second Test at Vishakhapatnam.
Ollie Robinson, on his podcast, had also revealed earlier that his Visa came in on the morning when England was supposed to fly down to India.
"There was an error at the ECB - I think they must have just put an initial wrong, or one letter must have been wrong. It didn't pass. He was like, 'You're not coming to India - you have to stay here for another night… it could be two nights, could be three nights, don't know how long it's going to take.' Luckily, I woke up in the morning to a nice message from Wayne saying 'visa's here'."
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