Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
The fate of IPL 2021 hangs in balance as the increasing cases of COVID-19 around the world is making things tougher for the organisers with each passing day. Notably, the tournament that kicked off on April 9 was postponed on May 4 after the emergence of COVID-19 cases in the bio-bubble. However, reports kept coming about BCCI's effort of trying to conduct the remainder of the mega event in the latter half of the year.
Now, a fresh media report suggests that the remaining matches of IPL 2021 is likely be held in UAE in the September-October window. A total of 31 IPL matches are yet to be played in the 14th edition of the tournament and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has already made it clear that the remaining matches cannot happen in India. In such a case, UAE seems a good option as if had successfully hosted the previous IPL edition.
When can BCCI schedule remainder of IPL 2021?
India play the World Test Championship final against New Zealand between June 18 and 22. Their next assignment is the 5-match Test series against England, starting August 4. The schedule for the last match of the series is September 10 to 14. BCCI may plan to conduct the remainder of IPL 2021 post that, that is the window between September 15 and October 15.
Meanwhile, the gap between the third and fourth Test is of 9 days. If that gap is tweaked, then the feasibility of IPL taking place would become more concrete. However, there has not been any update form BCCI so far regarding the developments. Earlier, there were reports that the cricket governing body had made a request to ECB to change the schedule of the series in order to conduct IPL, but later a BCCI official clarified that they hadn't made any such request.