The IPL is all set to return to Mumbai this week. BCCI is working to move it from Delhi and Ahmedabad to the Wankhede and the DY Patil Stadium by May 7, as per TOI.?
The deadline may see a slight delay of four or five days if more time is needed to sanitise hotels and stadium facilities before settling down.
The league, nevertheless, seems to be moving. Phone lines got overworked for the most part of Monday as the BCCI and franchise officials worked on the logistics and operations that will be involved. Booking of hotels, re-booking of chartered flights, preparing the stadiums for cricket, building a fresh bio-bubble and allotting green zones were work in progress.?
The BCCI admits that the logistics involved in this shift will be huge and the entire process needs to be planned thoroughly so as to avoid any breaches.?
The teams were earlier scheduled to fly from Delhi and Ahmedabad to Kolkata and Bangalore for the final leg of the tournament before shifting to Ahmedabad again for the knockouts and the final.?
All franchises have refused to fly to Kolkata and Bangalore, given the Covid situation. In fact, franchises that are based out of Delhi are scared, given the rising numbers in the national capital.
While Delhi, even as a state, was logging close to 20,000 cases per day, the Mumbai region has witnessed a drop and a total of 2662 new Covid cases were registered on Monday.
With the second wave of Covid-19 raging on in the country, it was only a matter of time before the pandemic had this year¡¯s Indian Premier League (IPL) in its grip. But the entire situation could have been easily avoided had the BCCI acted upon the IPL governing council¡¯s (GC) proposal.
It was learnt that the IPL GC had proposed that the entire tournament be shifted to the UAE a week prior to the start of the event on April 9. With IPL being such a long-drawn tournament, the GC, headed by Brijesh Patel, feared that things might spiral out of BCCI¡¯s control if the second wave broke out.
There were at least four IPL franchises as well that had pushed for the IPL to be shifted to UAE. But the BCCI didn¡¯t pay heed to the proposal despite the fact that the UAE had conducted last year¡¯s IPL successfully in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
The source also informed that UAE was put on standby in the week prior to the start of the tournament.
¡°UAE was always the first choice of the IPL GC for this year¡¯s tournament. Even a week before the start of IPL, they asked BCCI to move the entire event to the UAE. Emirates Cricket Board was also put on immediate alert and they were willing to conduct IPL again even if BCCI decided to shift the tournament in such short notice.
"But nobody in the BCCI showed the urgency to take the step. The officials kept waiting for each other to make the first move and eventually the proposal was shot down,¡± sources said.?