Melbourne, May 5

Australian fast bowler Pat Cummins has said that in hindsight, he thinks that the IPL organisers could have “tweaked a few things” to make the league more secure while hosting it in India even as the Covid-19 pandemic raged. The IPL was “indefinitely suspended” yesterday after at least four teams were hit by Covid-19 cases despite the bio-secure bubble.

Cummins, part of the Kolkata Knight Riders team, said the 2020 edition of the IPL, held in the UAE, was incredibly “well-run”. He said the organisers pushed it “little step further” by organising it in India this year. Last year, the IPL was first postponed and then shifted to the UAE as India was in the grip of the first wave of the pandemic.

“Last year we had the IPL held over in the UAE and that was an incredibly well-run tournament,” Cummins told a TV channel. “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.”

Cummins, however, didn’t specify what exactly could have been done differently in his comments, which were made before the league was suspended yesterday.

Criticism

Even when the tournament was on, there was a lot of criticism for conducting it at a time when a very large number of people in India were daily dealing with suffering and tragedy.

“It’s two different worlds. We’re lucky, we’re safe, we’re comfortable and there’s people just trying to get basic medical treatment,” Cummins said.

“First thing was to find out whether us playing the IPL was the right thing and basically everyone said, ‘We would be lost without the IPL for three or four hours every night’. I’m just trying to do my bit. India’s been such a good country to me and cricketers,” he added.

Australia’s Adam Zampa, who left the tournament last week, had made a scathing comment about this, saying: “There’s a lot of people coming out and saying games of cricket could be a reprieve for some people but that’s also going to be a personal answer. Someone who has a family member on their death bed probably doesn’t care about the cricket.” — TNS, agencies