Sri Lanka offers ground for IPL, says they will be ready till September

Last updated on May 21st, 2021 at 05:35 am

Considering the situation of suriging Covid-19 cases in India, Sri Lanka has come forward to offer its cricket grounds for the remaining matches of the Indian Premier League. This is after the rest of IPL matches were indefinitely suspended in India in the wake of a few players testing positive for Covid-19. 

Earlier today, reports in the Indian media revealed that New Zealand player Tim Seifert tested positive for coronavirus and was unable to travel back with his fellow teammates back to his home country. 

This is not the first incident. Mike Hussey and other IPL players were also tested positive for Covid-19 and when Saurav Ganguly was asked about how the bio-bubble breach happened, he said that the authorities were not aware of it. 

But given the craze of the shortest format event, the Sri Lankan government has offered to conduct the remaining matches in its grounds. Several country clubs in England had already requested the Indian officials to conduct the remainder of matches in its grounds and Sri Lanka is the recent addition to that list. 

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But as expressed by BCCI earlier, the concern is not regarding the availability of ground rather they are more focused in finding a window long enough to complete the tournament in time and also allow players sufficient time to rest. The chief of SLC’s managing committee, Arjun de Silva, showed confidence in the committee saying they can ‘certainly provide a window’ to host the IPL in September.

As far as BCCI’s choice is concerned, they still consider the United Arab Emirates to be their top priority for remaining matches. Reports suggest that BCCI has better trust on the UAE officials to organize the event and even de Silva asserted, “We hear the UAE (United Arab Emirates) is their one option but Sri Lanka can not be ignored for all reasons”.

de Silva also added that they are planning to host the Lanka Premier League in July-August and by September, the authorities claim, that the grounds will be ready for the get of the events. 

While announcing suspension of the matches, BCCI president Saurab Ganguly said that it was hard to find a window for completing IPL as the international calendar was jam packed. He had also said that the cricket organisation will be losing around Rs 2500 crore if matches were not held.