There’s still no certainty as to when the Indian Premier League (IPL) Season 13 can take place but that hasn’t restricted fans, pundits, franchise owners and even players from giving their suggestions. While it is understood that travelling around the country for the tournament amid these times of Coronavirus won’t be feasible, Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore has suggested hosting the league in only two cities.
The idea was, in fact, discussed during an IPL meeting in March before the country went into the lockdown mode. Pune and Mumbai emerged as the two cities which could host the entire season due to the number of cricketing venues they have.
“We did this in the UAE – we played in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah. There were no flights, just buses that were taking players back and forth. If we were to think of something like that, the idea that was tossed around was what if you think of a city like Mumbai. There are already four grounds here if you include the Reliance Ground. And if you think about Pune, which is only two and a half hours away, you could easily contain the whole activity,” he said.
Further delving into the situation of quarantine and players’ safety, Mysore said that a whole hotel could be reserved for one team for the entire tournament which would reduce the logistical headache too.
“You can assign one hotel to each team, make sure each team has two buses, fully sanitised and proper distancing maintained. So the logistics of travel is completely removed – no airports, no flights. You reduce the risk to a level people feel comfortable and can live with it,” he explained.
All these plans, however, could materialise once the COVID-19 situation in the country has returned to some level of normalcy when it is safer to restart such cricketing activities.
“This is obviously based on the premise that things are under control and we get some kind of a blessing from the powers that be. I think it’s a doable model. And in this environment if we could pull it off, it would be fascinating, without touching the quality of the product that we’ve all so carefully built,” the KKR top boss asserted.
