The 13th edition of the much-awaited Indian Premier League (IPL) will be played from September 19 to November 10 in UAE. Earlier, the league was postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing pandemic.
The postponement of the T20 World Cup, scheduled to commence from October this year in Australia, cleared the window for BCCI to go ahead with the cash-rich league. However, this didn’t go down well with some of the former Pakistani cricketers, including Shoaib Akhtar.
The ‘Rawalpindi Express’ slammed BCCI for prioritising IPL over multilateral ICC tournaments. Even Rashid Latif expressed his displeasure over the cancellation of Asia Cup and blamed the Indian board for the same.
However, former Indian cricketer Madan Lal has slammed Pakistani cricketers for making such incendiary remarks in his latest interaction with Vikrant Gupta on Sports Tak.
“The Pakistan cricketers, a lot of them, don’t think at all before they speak. How can they claim that India has got the World Cup postponed?” said Lal.
“Firstly COVID-19 was around and T20 World Cup is a different type of tournament. Considering the absence of crowd and sponsorship issues, ICC and Cricket Australia have taken the decision to postpone it, which is a good decision.”
“The IPL was always going to happen. We had already thought of organising the IPL in September-October depending on the available dates. So we have planned the IPL according to that which is a very good thing,” he added further.
The former cricketer further stated that Pakistan players should rather strive to improve their relationship with India. Rather than focussing on cricket, they keep on giving controversial statements that exacerbate the situation.
“Yes, probably the Asia Cup could have happened. But Pakistani players’ statements often reek of jealousy.”
“They should think how we can improve our relations so that cricket can keep continuing, but always there is some or the other player who comes and says something and the whole matter goes awry,” Lal concluded.
