World sports had taken a major hit due to the novel Coronavirus pandemic, as many leagues, tournaments and events were met with cancellation or postponement. This included the 2020 Indian Premier League, originally scheduled to start on 29th March, was pushed back to 15th April after Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lock down. However, the lock down has now been extended to 3rd May, and the cash rich league’s administrator BCCI has suspended IPL 2020 again until further notice.
The decision was taken after a joint conference of BCCI with all the franchises, stakeholders today, and an official statement is expected soon.
“The IPL is being shelved for the time being,” a statement from BCCI was quoted by Times of India following the meeting, which saw the presence of the president Sourav Ganguly, secretary Jay Shah, treasurer Arun Thakur, IPL governing council chairman Brijesh Patel and other senior employees.
“Given the situation, there is no choice but to postpone the IPL further. Further discussions will take place once the threat of COVID-19 subsides,” the statement added.
However, the sources rejected the term ‘indefinitely postponed’ being used to describe the current IPL scenario, as there have been talks of hosting the cash-rich league in the September-October window, just before the 2020 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
However, the source also added that if need be, IPL will outweigh the world cup, and even Team India’s tour of Australia in December, or any fixtures supposed to take place in that time frame.
The decision to postpone the thirteenth edition of IPL in the first place was due to the presence of enormous crowd in the match venues, which is a major catalyst of a Coronavirus contamination, which has not seen any slowdown even after the nationwide lock down was imposed earlier.
Additionally, due to the ban on foreign travel and visas, its impossible for the overseas players, coaches, staffs and sponsors to fly to India for the tournament given the current circumstances.
There has been over 11,000 confirmed Coronavirus cases in India as of now, and the death toll has risen to 392.
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