DUBAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India is more than living up to the adage that money can’t fill in for respect for process and procedure when delivering an event of the size and scale of the Indian Premier League in the middle of a calamity.
One would have thought the lessons provided by both the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which smoothly and successfully hosted West Indies, Pakistan, Ireland and now Australia back-to-back, as have the organisers of the Hero Carribean Premier League (CPL), would provide a ready template to ensure a glitch-free IPL. The reality on the ground has been quite the opposite though.
IPL 2020, which is scheduled to start on September 19, has already been jolted with 13 personnel, including at least two players of the Chennai Super Kings franchise – Deepak Chahar and Rituraj Gaikwad – testing positive and Suresh Raina, a permanent fixture of the Chennai-based franchise, returning to India after some disagreement with the CSK management.
“If there are 13 cases from only one franchise then it is an issue for sure for everyone,” an unnamed BCCI official was quoted as saying by PTI. “The biggest aspect will be whether foreign cricketers will now start being panicky as they are more touchy about these issues. We need to keep a tab on players’ mental health.”
Australian pace bowler Josh Hazlewood said as much, admitting to having some concern over the COVID-19 outbreak in the CSK camp in UAE. “We have a WhatsApp group with all the information that comes through, it’s obviously a little bit of a concern,” he said on Monday. “Ideally you’d have no cases, they are in quarantine now and I think that finishes up in the next few days. All my focus is on this tour at the moment and when the IPL comes closer we’ll think about that.”
Hazlewood is currently in the UK alongside the rest of the Australia squad to feature in a limited-overs series against England. Once the tour concludes on September 16, players from both sides with IPL contracts are due to fly to the UAE. Hazlewood, who will be joining the CSK squad, revealed that there will be discussions with Cricket Australia in case the numbers go up. “We haven’t spoken too much about it yet, it’s a few weeks away until we get there,” he noted. “I assume those things will come up if cases are still happening closer to the date, then we’ll touch base with Cricket Australia and have a chat.”
Doubts surrounding the upcoming edition of the IPL have grown further after at least one member of the STAR production crew, who was in the first batch to leave India for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), tested positive for coronavirus, forcing the official broadcaster to postpone flights, IANS reports.
Indians are expected to form the largest chunk of different departments of the STAR production team, and the first batch was scheduled to leave from Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai on Sunday, multiple sources told IANS. But STAR India on Sunday asked all of them to wait till it issues the next advice.
“STAR had asked the first lot of Indian crew members to reach the UAE from India on August 31, after reports of their COVID-19 tests, which were hurriedly done on Saturday on receiving instructions from the broadcaster. But one of them has tested positive and on getting this news the broadcaster immediately sent another instruction to all the personnel to defer their August 31 Emirates flight to the UAE,” a reliable BCCI-IPL source told the newswire.
Earlier, the production team members were to reach the UAE and straightaway go into quarantine. But now, not only has their departure been postponed but their quarantine period may also be longer once they reach the UAE.
The most surprising aspect is that the BCCI has still not released the IPL match schedule, with only 18 days left for the world’s most lucrative cricket competition to start. This, coupled with the large numbers of COVID positive tests, have put a serious question mark on the tournament, which the BCCI is desperate to organise as a lot of money is riding on it.
The BCCI-IPL source said that STAR might now wait and watch developments vis-a-vis COVID results of the other production team members – and also the development within the eight competing teams now in the UAE, besides the strict protocols in Abu Dhabi particularly. The matches are to be played in Abu Dhabi, which was also to stage the opening game between CSK and Mumbai Indians, Sharjah, and Dubai. All three emirates have different protocols and that has further made life difficult for all associated with the IPL.
Coming back to the BCCI, the state of affairs is summed up well by franchise representatives, telling Times of India that the Indian cricket board has not found the time to listen to the concerns / queries raised by different teams. “What’s happening is that they (BCCI-IPL) are ‘reacting’ to things. We have to raise a question for someone to tell us ‘we will revert’. There’s no communication,” franchises say.
Communication and the BCCI? To say that the two are not exactly compatible is an understatement.
Related Reports
2 IPL players test COVID +ve, in quarantine
CSK player, 12 support staff test +ve for coronavirus: Report
