Seven IPL franchises have hired a charter worth £100,000 to transport 22 players from Manchester to Dubai for the 13th edition of the T20 league, according to a Mumbai Mirror report.
See Also: England, Australia players to not get any relaxations in quarantine rules, as per reports
Steve Smith, David Warner, Aaron Finch, Pat Cummins, Jofra Archer, Jos Buttler, Eoin Morgan among others will board the flight in Manchester after the last game of the ongoing limited-overs series between England and Australia on September 17. All the players will arrive in UAE well before their team’s IPL openers.
Since no player from the ongoing series in England is a member of the Mumbai Indians squad, the defending champions have not participated in the collective effort.
The report also claims that efforts have been made in such a way that all players are transported from the England bubble to the IPL bubble so that they don’t have to undergo the mandatory six-day quarantine.
However, two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders, based in Abu Dhabi, will still need their players to follow the quarantine protocol because of the COVID-19 regulations in the city. All three KKR players – Cummins, Morgan and Tom Banton – will be eligible to play their first game on September 23.
As per the report, the IPL-bound English and Aussie cricketers will travel to the Manchester airport in a sanitised bus. The driver will be one who has been part of the bubble in England. Moreover, players will not be stopped for lengthy immigration process.
The aircraft too will be sanitised with its crew, who have been part of bio-security protocols. The aircraft would land at a different airport, not at the regular Dubai International Airport, and the franchises would have to send their buses or vehicles that have been part of their bubbles in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
“It has all been taken care of. The idea is that they are not outside of the bubble. If we had flown them by commercial flights, they would have had to undergo quarantine. And costwise also it would have been dearer as each player will have to be flown by business class. Close to Rs 1 crore for 22 players is not much I suppose,” a franchise official quoted as saying by Mumbai Mirror.
