The inevitable announcement has arrived from the ICC, the T20 World Cup 2020 that was scheduled to happen later this year in Australia has been postponed. The event was scheduled to start on October 18th 2020, but started running into troubles since March 2020 when the WHO announced Covid-19 as a global pandemic and with cases continuously increasing across the world over the past few weeks this announcement was indeed inevitable. But this postponement also affect the upcoming ICC events in the coming years. The ICC has recalibrated its upcoming events such as ICC men's T20 World Cup 2021 will start in October and will end in November 2021. The ICC men's T20 World Cup 2022 will be held in October-November 2022 with the final on 13th November 2022. Whereas the ICC men's Cricket World Cup 2023 will now be held in India between October and November 2023 with the final on 26 November 2023.
India and Australia is scheduled to hold the next two T20 World Cup, but it is still not fixed that which country will host which year version of the T20 World Cup. ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney stated that “We have undertaken a comprehensive and complex contingency planning exercise and through the process our number one priority has been to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in the sport. The decision to postpone the ICC men's T20 World Cup was taken after careful consideration of all of the options available to us and gives us the best possible opportunity of delivering two safe and successful T20 world cup for fans around the world”. And with this the ICC men's T20 World Cup 2020 is the new joinee in the list of cancelled or postponed sporting events around the world due to this Covid-19 pandemic.
But as every coin has its opposite side, this decision now gives a huge chance to the BCCI to proceed further towards arranging IPL in this year itself if situation permits. The Board of Control for Cricket in India zeroed in on UAE as the venue for the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League, IPL chairman Brijesh Patel confirmed on Tuesday. The board has written to the government seeking permission to hold the tournament in UAE and awaiting the go ahead. “We have written to the government seeking permission to host the tournament in UAE” Patel said on Tuesday. The dates have not been finalized as yet and will be decided at the IPL GC, which will be held in the next 7-10 days. But already rumours have started spreading that the board is eyeing to conduct the most popular franchise cricket league in the world somewhere around late September or early October,2020.
IPL, which was scheduled to begin in late March 2020 was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic is looking at several alternative in a bid to host it later in the year in India. Boards from several countries like Sri Lanka, New Zealand and UAE among others offered to host the tournament last month. The immediate Cricket board had offered to host the tournament by stating that they had the required infrastructure for it and this was also a better choice for BCCI as this tournament has taken place successfully in UAE previously (first phase i.e 20 matches of IPL 2014 was played in UAE between 16th to 30th April, 2014) and it attracted a large number of crowd there.
Mr. Brijesh Patel has insisted that the option of hosting the tournament in India hasn't been eliminated as yet the decision will be taken in the upcoming IPL Governing Council meeting.
