After being postponed from the month of March, the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL), eventually, took place from September 19 to November 10 in the United Arab Emirates. However, with the upcoming edition scheduled to take place in March-April, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already pulled its socks up due to lack of preparation time.
In a short span of time, the board has to decide on the mega-auction, the venues and dates for the matches. The COVID-19 pandemic won’t be making things any easy for them either. Moreover, reports of adding two more teams have also been doing the rounds. However, the addition might just be postponed to 2022.
“Time is too short for introduction of the new teams for IPL in 2021. Tendering, players auction and most importantly getting all the stakeholders on the same page will be really challenging in short-time span. We are of the view, any addition to the team should only happen for IPL 2022,” a BCCI official was quoted as saying.
“Our broadcast rights deal with Star will end by IPL 2021. After the end of the cycle, we should introduce new teams so that the broadcast rights and other commercial partnership values can be increased. Final decision now will be taken in AGM only and according to me the plan to increase teams will be shelved this year,” the official stated.
The board understands that increase in number of teams will lead to rise in number of matches, and given the current scenario, pulling out a ‘bigger window’ can turn out to be an arduous task.
“Ten teams will mean 94 matches in the home and away format. That implies a bigger window for the tournament, which may be tough given the current situation,” the official added.
The BCCI members are set to discuss on the matters during the Annual General Meeting, set to take place on December 24. Previously, it was learned that one of the two teams would be from Ahmedabad while the other would be from either Kanpur or Lucknow.
