BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said that the board has every intention to host the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year itself because it will play a crucial role in the country’s domestic season but a decision will be taken. Ganguly also said that BCCI will try its level best to hat IPL in India as the tournament is currently been suspended indefinitely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
On his 48th birthday, during a chat with India Today, Sourav Ganguly asserted, “We want to have it, as I said that cricket needs to be back. For us, it’s off-season at the moment which has actually helped. We finished our domestic season in March and then we had to cancel the IPL, which is the most important part of our domestic season. We want IPL to happen because life needs to be back to normal and cricket needs to be back to normal.”
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Meanwhile, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and UAE have offered to host the IPL 2020 if some logistical issues occur in India. As of now, all international travel is banned in India where Covid-19 cases are increasing significantly daily.
Only once in the history of IPL, the entire tournament was shifted out of India (in 2009). Ganguly said he wants to host the tournament in India as if it moves outside India, it’ll cost a lot for the board. However, he also said that the priority is hosting the tournament.
Dada explained, “If it doesn’t happen in India because of Covid-19 because places like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai these are big teams in the IPL and at this stage, I don’t think you can put your hand on heart and say that cricket will happen in these places. We were keen to go to Ahmedabad to see the new stadium but I don’t know if we will be able to go there or not. It’s not easy at the moment to say that we are going to host it in India.”
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He further added, “First is whether we can (play the IPL) within the time frame because IPL has limited windows. Secondly, will it be in India? If it’s not then we think of going out, but where. So we are monitoring it and we are very keen to host it. We have our fingers crossed, we don’t want the year 2020 to finish without an IPL.”
