After a successful Indian Premier League (IPL 2020) in UAE last year, BCCI was ready to host the tournament back in India this year (IPL 2021). But with the number of COVID-19 cases spiking across the country, the league had to be indefinitely suspended mid-season after 29 games.

Former India batsman Aakash Chopra talked about difficulties in maintaining the bio-bubbles in India as compared to UAE in his recent YouTube video.

“I was reading Sourav Ganguly's interview and the first thing that is coming to mind is air travel. Air travel has been an issue. In the UAE, you were traveling by road. Air travel is a tricky bit, you asked for tarmac to tarmac access but you didn't get it everywhere,” Chopra said.

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“Secondly in the UAE, the numbers were stacked in favor of the IPL. Here the numbers were stacked against the IPL. As the IPL was progressing the numbers were going through the roof. In the end, it is a game of odds, if the positivity has gone so high, it is easy to seep in,” he added.

As this year’s IPL was scheduled in such a way that there were multiple venues in multiple cities which were going to be used in different legs of the tournament.

“The problem with multiple cities is that you cannot take the entire hotel. If you are moving from city to city, with teams staying in different hotels, you can take only a limited number of rooms, unless of course there is one franchise who took the entire hotel everywhere,” the 43-year-old said.

As the number of COVID-19 cases were increasing all over the country, there was a big question mark whether the tournament should continue or not and eventually the league was suspended indefinitely after players and some members of support staff tested positive inside team’s bio-bubbles.

(With Hindustan Times inputs)