All the speculations hovering around the fate of ICC T20 World Cup 2020 has now been cleared up. COVID-19 has certainly acted as a spoilsport for this year’s mega-event scheduled to take place in Australia. BCCI now has all the reasons to go ahead with its plan of hosting IPL 2020 in the September-November period.
With fresh coronavirus cases as high as 35k being reported every day for the last 10 days in India, it was only a matter of time for BCCI to take a decision on organizing it overseas. Earlier this month, Sri Lanka, UAE and New Zealand had shown interest to host IPL 2020. After much deliberation, BCCI has stuck with the UAE given its proximity from India and also its convenient time zone.
BCCI to seek Government clearance to host IPL 2020
In a recent official statement, BCCI said that they have almost finalized UAE as the hosting country for IPL 2020. IPL Governing Council chairman Brijesh Patel maintained that BCCI will now have to seek the final clearance from the Government of India to take the proceedings forward.
“Hopefully, in a couple of days, we will seek clearance from the government for the marquee event to be played out in the UAE.”, Patel told the PTI.
Apart from this, the BCCI Governing Council is also expected to hold a meeting this week. In that meeting, further course of actions will be chalked out in order to organize the tournament successfully.
BCCI is also very positive going ahead with UAE as the final venue. In IPL 2014, UAE had hosted the first leg of the tournament owing to the Lok Sabha elections back home. The facilities and the current situation in the UAE also played a major role in it to get the final ticket.
Last week, reports suggest that IPL 2020 will be starting from September 26 in UAE and the final will be played out on either November 7th or 8th.