The costliest foreign cricketer in the Indian Premier League, Pat Cummins reckons that Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team management is still hopeful of the 13th edition of the T20 event to go ahead sometime later. However, the Aussie pacer, conceded that the priority now is to minimize the risk of spreading the coronavirus. The IPL was scheduled to commence on March 29 in Mumbai but it has been suspended till April 15 due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic.
As per the quotes in Australian, Associated Press, Cummins aid, “Everyone is still really keen for it (IPL) to go ahead, but the priority is to minimize the risk of it spreading.”
India is currently under a nationwide lockdown until April 14, which has put the future of the cash-rich league under some serious threat’s 13th edition. Cummins has been in constant contact with the KKR team which bought him for a whopping ₹15.5 crore last December at the auction, as everyone waits for the league”s fate.
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Describing the same, Cummins said, “It”s a holding pattern … the last I spoke to them, they were still really confident and hopeful it’ll be on at some stage.”
The deadly coronavirus has infected more than a million people worldwide. Australia has reported more than 5,000 cases including 26 deaths. European countries like Italy, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom alongside the United States of America have become the hotspots of the outbreak, which started from the Chinese city of Wuhan.
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Talking bout the effects of the virus, Cummins said, “Obviously got a lot of family over in England at the moment and speaking to them regularly. Speaking to a few close mates who play county cricket over there, they’ve gone through the whole pre-season and geared up for the start of their summer. They’re now staring down the barrel of potentially their whole summer of cricket being over … the health risk is a big one, but those guys basically have to put their careers on hold.”
