Former Australia captain Ian Chappell believes the indefinite suspension of the Indian Premier League 2021 could be a precedent for the T20 World Cup to be also postponed or moved outside India.
The BCCI and IPL governing council were forced to put an indefinite pause on the IPL 2021 after just 29 of the scheduled 60 games on May 4 following news of multiple bio-bubble breaches and positive coronavirus tests in four different teams’ camps.
To ensure everyone’s safety, the Indian board had to take its ultimate call, despite knowing very well it would find it difficult to resume the annual T20 tournament during an alternative window in a busy calendar year.
India are scheduled to host this year’s edition of the T20 World Cup in October and November. And though the second wave of the pandemic has had a devastating effect, the BCCI is confident of not having to move it outside the country.
Chappell, however, doesn’t think the T20 World Cup is as safe as the Indian administrators would have you believe. He said the postponement of the IPL 2021 was a reminder of how vulnerable the game of cricket is amid the pandemic. Chappell added that the suspension of IPL could be a precedent for the T20 World Cup to also be postponed or moved outside India.
“The suspension of the 2021 IPL tournament because of surging Covid infections and deaths among the public, and a number of participants testing positive, was a reminder of the game’s vulnerability,”
“In the current disastrous climate, the suspension of the IPL could also produce a precedent. It may lead to the World T20 event, programmed for India later in the year, either being postponed or moved,”
Chappell wrote in his column for ESPNcricinfo.
The International Cricket Council has kept UAE, where the last year’s edition of the IPL was safely held, as a backup venue for the T20 World Cup.
The BCCI last month proposed nine venues to the ICC to host the T20 World Cup, namely Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Dharamsala, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Mumbai. Ahmedabad.
Dhiraj Malhotra, the tournament director for the T20 World Cup, had said on the BBC’s Stumped podcast that the BCCI will take the competition to UAE in a worst-case scenario if the ICC finds India unsafe as a destination.
“I hope so (that T20 World Cup remains in India). I am doing everything we can to make sure that it happens. We will be doing normal scenario, Covid-scenario, worst case scenario. All that we are in talks with the ICC at the moment,”
Malhotra said.
Malhotra, who joined BCCI as general manager of cricket operations and game development in February, said UAE is part of the Indian board’s contingency measure. The Middle East is coping significantly better from the pandemic than some of the other countries and the close-distant venues in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah also make it easier to cross the logistical hurdles.
“It would be (the) UAE. And we are hoping it will again be done by BCCI – we will take the tournament there. So it will be still run by BCCI,”
said Malhotra.
UAE has emerged as a genuine replacement host for the T20 World Cup since the rest of the cricket world has started raising question marks over the safety of India as a venue. The country is experiencing an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 positive cases and deaths, with the scheduled ICC event only six months away.
