MUMBAI: After the 2021 Indian Premier League was suspended indefinitely on Tuesday, Board of Control for Cricket in India vice president Rajeev Shukla insists that the tournament is not cancelled.
“One thing I want to make very clear – it has not been cancelled. It has been postponed, suspended and deferred. The remaining part of this IPL will happen. In due course, when the Covid situation improves, a decision will be taken about it,” Shukla told host broadcaster Star Sports.
In a related development, an unnamed BCCI official told Cricbuzz that the board could look at the September window after England’s tour of India is complete and before the T20 World Cup scheduled in India for October-November.
The 52-day 60-match tournament would have concluded in Ahmedabad on May 30. However, only 24 days of cricket was possible with 29 completed games before the virus halted proceedings.
The BCCI and IPL governing council made the decision to call off the event for now in an emergency meeting after more positive cases for Covid-19 were reported on Tuesday in the bio-secure bubbles, unanimously deciding to postpone IPL 2021 season, with immediate effect.
Shukla reiterated that it was BCCI’s duty to offer a safe passage back home for the participants of IPL 2021 and understood that some of them were apprehensive about the situation in India.
Shukla told AFP that the governing body would “make the arrangements” for the IPL’s international players to leave India.
“About the foreign players, as we have said, we will try and ensure all of them get to their homes,” he said.
Cricket Australia said in a statement that it was in touch with the BCCI to “ensure the safe accommodation and repatriation of Australian players, coaches, match officials and commentators back home”.
Meanwhile the BCCI’s top brass continues to serve up excuses for the failure of the world’s richest cricket body to have contingency plans in place while putting together its IPL 2021 blueprint.
Sample this from Arun Dhumal, BCCI treasurer and brother of Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Thakur: “The IPL should have been played in all areas. We all thought that after what the country went through in 2020, the IPL will boost the spirit of the country. We conducted a dummy run and planned out things. When the England series was conducted in Ahmedabad, Chennai and Pune, the situation was far better. As things went so smoothly, we all were quite confident that we will be able to conduct the IPL smoothly. Who would have imagined such a situation will arise? Had we known, we could have held the IPL overseas. It was during the time when things were getting normal that we took the call. We were quite confident that we will pull it off.”
Who could have imagined? Pretty much anyone who had their eyes on the ball on an event playing out in the middle of a raging global pandemic.
Related Report
IPL 2021 indefinitely postponed as SRH player tests positive
