By Revatha S. Silva
[caption id="attachment_129430" align="alignleft" width="352"]
BCCI President Sourav Ganguly (left) and its Secretary Jay Shah posing for cameras the day they officially announced the T20 World Cup 2021. That was in UAE last year after the completion of the IPL 2020[/caption]
The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) T20 World Cup, scheduled to be held in India during October and November this year will be going ahead as planned but the organisers have their backup plans ready due to the volatile Covid-19 situation in the country. The ICC has already decided to keep the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as an alternate venue, if the pandemic situation in India aggravates, our sources in Dubai revealed yesterday (8).
“If the ongoing Covid-19 situation is to continue, they (the ICC) will definitely move the T20 World Cup to UAE,” the source said.
ICC’s interim CEO Geoff Allardice has on Wednesday said, as it was reported in the media, that the body has backup plans in place for the World Cup in India later this year but is currently not entertaining any thoughts of moving it out of the country despite a surge in Covid-19 cases.
But the India Premier League (IPL) 2021 which will begin today (9) in Chennai is severely affected by the latest surge of the pandemic. A few players and some event management crew members have already tested positive for Covid-19 creating fear among the organisers of the IPL, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The BCCI has an existing agreement with the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB).
The IPL is anyway played behind closed doors this time and it is said that the organizers had had plans to use Sri Lanka as an alternative venue this time because UAE was not ready for the event. The annual league’s last year’s edition was held in the UAE following the outbreak of the pandemic.
“The ICC will make the final call on the venue of the World Cup in August,” the source added. India has been reporting over one lakh daily cases for the past few days.
“But if the World Cup is to be moved to UAE, the player squads will have to be changed as the Indian wickets are supposed to be slow but the UAE wickets are usually placid ones that assist both bowling as well as batting,” pointed out the source.
“We are certainly proceeding with the event as planned,” Allardice has said during a virtual media round-table this week.
“Plan B we have, but we haven’t activated those plans yet. We are working with the BCCI, we do have backup plans that can be activated if the time comes,” he had added.
But significantly, ICC’s final decision will mainly depend on the position of the event broadcaster Star TV, it is believed.
“As it is today, the ICC is awaiting without making a final call on the World Cup. In fact, India was prioritised this year as the venue especially because of the crowd attendance that was expected in the country,” he said.
“Therefore, if the competition is to be staged behind closed doors in India, it will not fulfill the main purpose of having it there,” he further explained.
In fact, it was Australia who was scheduled to host the tournament in 2020 and India was to have it this year in a peculiar arrangement where two T20 World Cups had been lined up for two consecutive years by the ICC.
When the 2020 T20 Australia World Cup was postponed, many thought Australia would be given the hosting rights of the 2021 T20 World Cup and the 2021 India tournament would be moved to 2022.
But that didn’t happen. India in fact has the hosting rights to the 2023 (50-over) World Cup too. It was therefore cited that they cannot hold two World Cups in two successive years; T20 World Cup in 2022 and the 50-over World Cup in 2023. Therefore the 2021 T20 World Cup stayed in India while the postponed 2020 Australia event was moved to 2022.
“The discussions in this regard were held in the ICC only last week. The Indian and ICC television right holders are Star Sports India. A lot will depend on their position on having the World Cup in India or not,” he further pointed out.