The ICC has bought further time before you make a decision on the destiny of the men’s T20 World Cup, as it assists in keeping tabs on the encouraging progress Australia and New Zealand are making against the Covid-19 pandemic. The tournament is scheduled to be played this October-November in Australia, but the chances of it going ahead have not looked particularly promising in recent weeks. Less than a fortnight ago, Cricket Australia (CA)’s chief executive Kevin Roberts said the tournament was once at “very high risk.”
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But this week Richard Colbeck, the Australian Sports Minister, told Sportstar that the country had flattened the pandemic curve and as a result was once a “becoming host for an international sporting spectacle” and could even allow spectators based on the ground situation at the time. Earlier in May Colbeck had pointed out that it was once the crowds – and not the 16 participating teams – that was once the main hurdle for hosting the marquee event. New Zealand, where the women’s World Cup is scheduled to be held in February-March next year, has recently declared itself pandemic-free, leading the ICC to consider it can manage to pay for to wait a bit more while different alternatives are worked out in case the T20 World Cup is deferred to 2021.
On Wednesday, the ICC board agreed to continue discussing a number of options, as a part of the contingency planning, “whilst planning for delivery of the events in the scheduled window is ongoing.”
“The situation surrounding the global pandemic is evolving swiftly and we need to give ourselves the most productive imaginable possibility to make the correct decision for the whole sport,” the ICC’s chief executive Manu Sawhney said. “The health and well-being of everyone involved is our precedence and other considerations fall out from that.
“We will be able to only get one chance to make this decision and it must be the correct one and as such we will be able to continue to refer to with our members, broadcasters, partners, governments and players and to be sure that we make a timely informed decision.”
The assembly on Wednesday picked up from the final session, which was once adjourned after the international scheduling agenda was once overtaken by concerns inside the board over confidentiality. An independent investigation into that issue continues but one upshot from today was once the decision to extend the deadline to the BCCI to come up a solution to the tax issue around ICC events in India.
More to follow…