After the current IPL season got suspended due to positive COVID-19 cases from multiple participant teams, BCCI’s Vice President Rajeev Shukla stated that the IPL has not been completely shut down; rather, it has been postponed. He further reinstated that efforts will be made in order to plan and arrange the remainder of the matches.
As it stands, the priority is to be concentrated on getting all the foreign players back to their nations, as well as all the Indian players back to their native places. Looking at the damage from a different angle, the number of IPL players who tested positive was in a single-digit bracket when the competition got suspended. This indicates that the corrective measures were taken at the right time, which would prevent further detriment for the time being.
In order to keep the players active and their physical progress on track, teams’ coaching staffs can reliably implement virtual training regimes. For the aforementioned, they can consider the fact that they have a highly workable reference from the European football fraternity from when they used to do the same during the global lockdown last year.
As Rajeev Shukla mentioned about the resumption of IPL later this year, cricket could possibly be back around September, provided that the conditions look favourable. An accurate estimation of the recovery rates all over the nation is far from feasible to calculate as of now. This is why an indefinitely suspended event was the best possible resolution in these unfavourable circumstances.
For the near future, the IPL can be relocated to the UAE like it had to be done with the 2020 edition. After the T20 World Cup is being considered to be shifted, IPL could feasibly follow. The UAE offered three venues in Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi for last year’s competition. Also, the area being mostly desert, promises to be much less crowded than India.
