BCCI President Sourav Ganguly Estimates Rs 2,500 Crore Loss if IPL 2021 is Not Completed

If the suspended IPL 2021 isn’t completed, Indian cricket board is estimated to incur losses of around Rs 2,500 crore, says BCCI president and former India captain Sourav Ganguly. The T20 league was cancelled earlier this week once players and support staff began testing positive for coronavirus despite being in bio-secure bubbles for a significant period.

“If we fail to complete the IPL, the loss will be close to INR 2500 crore (USD 340 million approximately). That is going by early estimates,” Ganguly told The Telegraph.

However, BCCI will have to dig deep to carve out a window in the busy international calendar for organising the remainder of the IPL, And then there’s the logistics of finding a suitable venue, availability of overseas players and coronavirus restrictions.

Ganguly hinted the BCCI may soon open channels of communications with other cricket boards to explore a possible window in 2021. “There has got to be a lot of shuffling. Only a day has passed since we suspended the IPL. We have to speak to other boards and see if a window can be made available before the T20 World Cup. Lot of things are involved and we will slowly start working on them,” he said.

Ganguly though refuses to term the suspension of what is touted as world’s richest T29 league as a blow.

“I wouldn’t say it is a blow… Don’t forget last year we had no Wimbledon or Olympics. These are extraordinary times and we have to take it in our stride and move on. We can’t do much in these situations. Perhaps we have to only wait for things to improve,” he said.

While it’s hard to predict how coronavirus pandemic progresses in the coming month, what it does is put a big question mark over the organisation of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in India later this year. Ganguly says it’s a little too early to make any assumptions regarding the marquee event.

“Let’s see what happens to the World T20. There’s still some time left and we don’t know how things will pan out a month later… Can’t comment right now. But let’s not assume things,” he said.

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