The International Cricket Council (ICC) last week announced that the 2020 T20 World Cup, scheduled in Australia is postponed to 2022.
India, in turn, will host the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup, which was initially scheduled in 2022 according to the Future Tours Programme (FTP).
Now, the apex cricketing body has kept Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as back-up venues, in the wake of growing number of COVID-19 cases in India. The total number of coronavirus cases has surpassed the 2 million mark, with a substantial death toll of 45,000.
India is the third-most severely hit country in the world after the United States of America (USA) and Brazil. As a precautionary measure, the ICC designates back-up venues for the marquee world events.
Moreover, Sri Lanka and UAE also offered their bid for hosting rights in the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL). UAE were eventually granted the tournament’s hosting rights by the BCCI.
“Sri Lanka and the UAE are among the back-up venues for the 2021 men’s T20 World Cup, should the Covid-19 pandemic make India an untenable host,” read a report from Espncricinfo.com.
“Identifying potential back-up venues is standard practice for every ICC event, but it takes on extra significance in this time because of the nature of the pandemic. India is currently the third-worst-hit country in the world in terms of cases, according to most data studies, with over 2 million cases so far and over 45,000 deaths,” the report read further.
“The current situation has forced the BCCI to relocate the IPL to the UAE, and only tentative plans are in place for the domestic season,” the report stated in a gist.
Earlier, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) remained adamant about hosting the T20 world event in its scheduled window, rather than postponing it to 2022. It would have primarily meant India hosting three key events with a span of one year (keeping in mind 2023 ODI World Cup and 2023 IPL).
However, Cricket Australia (CA) did not raise any objection to India retaining the 2021 T20 World Cup and interchanging the 2020 ICC event in the year 2022.
