IPL 2021 Suspended: Will The ICC T20 World Cup Be Taken Out of India?

So, the bubble has burst and the Indian Premier League is indefinitely postponed. It was bound to happen after the events over the last two days. First, cases emerged within the Kolkata Knight Riders camp with Sandeep Warrier and Varun Chakravarthy testing positive in Ahmedabad. On the same day, in a different city in Delhi, Chennai Super Kings’ bowling coach L Balaji turned positive along with a travel staff. On Tuesday, Wriddhiman Saha and Amit Mishra from Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals reportedly turned positive, leaving BCCI with no option but to suspend the tournament.

IPL 2021 Suspended Live Updates

The BCCI is perhaps rueing their decision to host the tournament in India this year, after having successfully hosted an incident free edition last year in the United Arab Emirates. They’ll look back with even more disappointment for scheduling the tournament across six cities – Chennai, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. All these cities have been affected badly by the raging pandemic.

Yes, the cases were not as high when the decisions were made. But there was still time for a rethink in strategy as they got closer to the start of the tournament, or even midway through it. Making players travel across cities – especially to the likes of Delhi – was not a smart decision after all. Bubble or no bubble. That it required a bubble burst for the BCCI to learn the lesson says a lot.

IPL 2021: Full List of Covid19 Positive Players, Support, Ground Staff & Broadcast Team

Questions will be, and are being, asked on why the board wanted to host the tournament in India and not in UAE. The latter was always the safer option, even when cases were lower in India than now. However, it’s understood that the BCCI wanted to host IPL in India to show the world that they will have no issues in hosting the ICC T20 World Cup here later in the year. A safe IPL would have given the cricket world a message that the T20 World Cup too can proceed without hassles.

However, as things have panned out, BCCI could now stand to lose big time. While trying to prove they can host the IPL successfully, the board might have lost out on T20 World Cup too. There’s still time left for that tournament, scheduled for October-November. Fingers crossed, the situation will improve in the country by then. But how will the BCCI convince stakeholders that they can host the tournament safely?

Multiple foreign players in the country are likely to have an anxious wait now with borders being closed and restrictions on travel. How will teams feel safe to return to India later this year?

Here’s Pat Cummins, from Kolkata Knight Riders summing it up to Fox Sports.

“Last year we had the IPL held over in the UAE and that was an incredibly well-run tournament,” he said. “This year, they tried to push it that little step further and have it over here in multiple cities in India. I’m sure looking back they might have tweaked a few things.”

Not too long back, the BCCI had said it’s too early to talk about the T20 World Cup while confirming that the back up plan was to host it in UAE.

“It’s too early to say what will happen. But the contingency plan is that it would go to UAE with the hosting rights staying with BCCI,” Dhiraj Malhotra, GM, BCCI and the tournament director of the World Cup had told Hindustan Times.

The IPL was going on safely then, even while the rest of the country was ravaged by COVID-19. The BCCI officials were confident that they could also host the World Cup. It was reported that they were considering as many as nine venues for the tournament: Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Dharamsala, Ahmedabad and Lucknow.

As cases continued to increase exponentially, reports emerged that the BCCI was planning to reduce the number of venues to five. An ICC recce team was supposed to inspect the bio bubble arrangements in the IPL on April 26 in Delhi, but travel bans meant that couldn’t happen.

Now, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen to the T20 World Cup. Unless the situation improves drastically, it’s hard for the BCCI to convince stakeholders that they can host it in India. UAE seems the safer bet.

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• ICC T20 World Cup 2021
• IPL 2021
• IPL covid crisis