Amidst fears of an overlap, BCCI and Cricket West Indies have reached an agreement that would see the Caribbean Premier League finish a few days earlier and avoid clashing with the UAE leg of the Indian Premier League 2021, reported Cricbuzz.
The CPL organisers have agreed to a request made by the Indian board to advance their tournament window, which would allow the rescheduled IPL 2021 to be held with maximum overseas player participation.
Originally scheduled to be played from August 28 to September 19, the CPL 2021 will now be held between August 26 and September 15. All the 33 tournament matches, as announced earlier, will take place in St Kitts & Nevis.
The agreement between CWI and BCCI has been reached after BCCI secretary Jay Shah led talks on this front with CPL COO Pete Russell and then extended the same with CWI board officials.
“CWI is doing our best to help facilitate a smooth transition from CPL to IPL, without a conflicting overlap,”
Ricky Skerritt, CWI president, told Cricbuzz, to confirm the acceptance of BCCI’s proposal and tweak in the CPL schedule.
While a revised schedule is expected in the coming days, if the CPL starts on August 26, it will kick-off in less than two days after the end of West Indies’ second Test against Pakistan, which culminates a long and busy international summer. For players from the Caribbean, who will post-CPL join their respective IPL franchises and then play the T20 World Cup, it will be a very physically and mentally challenging itinerary.
For CPL authorities, the challenge is to take care of the logistics and bubble to bubble transfer amid the COVID-19 pandemic, considering that some of the West Indies players will also be travelling to the UK to take part in the inaugural 100-ball tournament. The Hundred is set to run from July 22 to August 21, and it is expected that CPL-bound cricketers from the same will be given quarantine exemption.
Relief from isolation would be a direct result of St Kitts being a largely Covid-free island. The government is willing to show leniency towards those who have taken two vaccine shots before arriving. However, those coming into CPL 2021 without vaccine and from outside a bubble will have to go through a five-day quarantine.
The BCCI, on its part, is expected to announce the schedule for the rest of the IPL 2021 matches soon. The board has already confirmed that the tournament will take place in September-October – just after India’s elongated Test summer in the UK and before the T20 World Cup.
