Harshita
NEW DELHI: With the outbreak of pandemic coronavirus, most of the sports events around the world are either getting postponed or cancelled. Indian Premier League 2020 (IPL) has quite a gleamy chance to start on 15th April as the nation is on lockdown till 14th April. However, BCCI is planning to move the league to October-November but that will be only possible if ICC decides to push back men's T20 World Cup further.
As the men's T20 WC is scheduled to be played from October 18th to November 15th this year in Australia then even if the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) perfectly plans the IPL later this year, it won't be possible if the WC does not shift to a further date.
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"At present, there is a lockdown of borders and while Australia has said it is a potential six-month lockdown, things can change with an improvement in the scenario. UK could follow the same pattern considering the spread of the pandemic. We are still to understand what the Indian government will decide with regard to closing the international borders. In such a scenario, the only window that looks safe is the October-November one. But again, that collides with the T20 World Cup," said a BCCI official.
The official further said, "So, if the ICC does go ahead and decides to postpone the T20 World Cup due to the current scenario, only then we can look at the October-November window because even if a six-month border closedown is ordered by every country from say now, it ends by the start of October. But again, for that, the spread of the coronavirus needs to be stopped and things must come under human control. In short, there will have to be a lot of maths."
However, the official added that a lot of things would have to fall under the right place to make this happen. "Again, it would be the last step for the ICC to push the T20 World Cup from 2020 to 2022 because there is no window in 2021. So, at the moment, it is all a bit too far-fetched, to be honest. But yes, the October-November window has been spoken about for the IPL, but a lot of external factors need to fall into place for that to become a reality," added the official.
On the other hand, an ICC official made it clear that the men's T20 WC is currently on as planned and there are no talks of postponement. The official said, "There have been no talks of any postponement to the World T20 that is to be held in October and November this year."
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Kevin Roberts, Cricket Australia chief, earlier said that he hopes that the T20 WC could be played as originally planned under normal circumstances.
