After months of wait, the ICC decided to postpone the T20 World Cup scheduled to take place in Australia later this year. The decision came after ICC’s consultation with their stakeholders and Cricket Australia where it was deemed unrealistic to host the tournament.
Meanwhile, former Pakistani cricketer, Basit Ali has come out with a theory that decision to postpone the tournament was delayed because of former ICC chairman Shashank Manohar. Incidentally, the decision was going rounds since the last couple of the weeks before ICC declared it.
Shashank Manohar didn’t want IPL to happen – Basit Ali
“It was a clear tactic of Shashank Manohar (the ex-Chairman of the ICC), the World Cup should have been postponed 1-1.5 months back, I am sorry the Indian viewers might feel bad, he did not want the IPL to happen. That is my opinion, I have said this before also. He played the delay tactics,” he said while speaking to his Youtube channel.
If Basit Ali is to be believed then this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Shashank Manohar going against BCCI. Over the years, we’ve seen how under Manohar’s tenure, BCCI lost its place in the ICC finance committee.
Though in this case, it wasn’t anyone but Manohar who didn’t want the IPL to take place this year. Basit claimed that BCCI pressurised ICC and Asian Cricket Council to defer the T20 World Cup and Asia Cup 2020.
“There has been talk in social media and channels, even I had received calls but I refused to answer, that BCCI has put so much pressure that the World Cup got postponed and stopped the Asia Cup for the IPL to happen.
Actually, people do not know the inside story of what was discussed in the ICC meeting. It was already known that the T20 World Cup was never going to happen as Australia had already refused to hold it,” he added.
If we look at how things have panned out, ICC decided to postpone the T20 World Cup after Shashank Manohar resigned as the ICC chairman.
