In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, a BCCI senior official said that hosting World Cup this year would be difficult. Likewise, he rejected all speculations about the 13th edition of the IPL saying, “We can’t think of IPL getting back yet.”
Future of T20 WC and IPL remains uncertain
The COVID-19 forced the sporting world to go for an extended lockdown. A number of major events got cancelled or postponed until further notice. With no positive news of the world getting back to a normal routine, the chances of upcoming sporting events become are becoming less day by day. As per cricket is concerned, the star-studded Indian Premier League also got delayed for an indefinite time along with other tournaments. The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is still scheduled to be played at the end of this year in Australia. The current situation makes the future of the same dicey although a lot of cricket players are being optimistic about the same.
On the other hand, the IPL 2020 was scheduled to begin on March 29. Initially, it got deferred until April 15. Then Indian government announced an extended lockdown till May 17, as of now and the future of the league became uncertain. While there are news doing the rounds that the IPL might travel abroad this year or be held in October-November if World Cup gets cancelled, the BCCI treasurer in a recent interview denied all such claims.
What BCCI official says
While asked about the possibility of T20 World Cup and Indian Premier League this year, the senior official did not sound very hopeful. He believes that it would be difficult for all to go for the showpiece event just after the lockdown. “They will have been out of cricket for a long time. Would you want to be without training for that long and straight away go and play [the] World Cup?” he said. “That is a call every board has to take. It seems to be difficult.”
Regarding IPL, he rejected all speculations and said, “Players coming in from other countries, whether they’ll be willing to come here and be quarantined for two weeks and play IPL is not known. How can we think of IPL? This is all media speculation. There is nothing as of now. Once things get clear, then only will we be able to go back to the drawing board and think about re-starting cricket.”
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