Considering the severe health crisis caused by second COVID-19 wave in India, it seems immensely challenging to host the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 in the country, slated to be held in October-November.
However, the BCCI is confident of staging the showpiece tournament as per schedule but it could be played in five cities instead of originally nine shortlisted venues.
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Meanwhile, ICC has kept the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a back-up country to conduct the marquee event if the COVID-19 situation doesn’t improve in India.
The 14th edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) is currently being played in a bio-secure bubble but BCCI will face perhaps its biggest challenge of organizing an ICC tournament in adverse circumstances.
"We are still hopeful that with five months left and significant population being vaccinated, we will be in a position to host World T20. Yes, one of the options could be curtailing the nine venues to a maximum four or five," a senior BCCI official told PTI on Friday (April 30).
Bearing the T20 World Cup in mind, an ICC recce team was due to reach Delhi on April 26 to examine the bio-secure arrangements for the IPL but the travel bans imposed on India led to the deferment of the visit.
"Yes, the team was supposed to arrive earlier this week but with travel bans in place, they will come later once situation returns to normalcy," the office-bearer said.
On Friday, BCCI's GM (Game Development) Dhiraj Malhotra told the BBC that "UAE is the back-up venue".
However, the board official said UAE was always the second option as per rules.
"You always have a back up venue and UAE has been the venue after it was passed at ICC meeting last year. There's nothing new in what Dhiraj had said. Obviously, if the situation remains same after five months, you will have to have Plan B ready," he stated.
While the T20 World Cup has always been confined to 3-4 venues in other countries, it hasn’t been a case in India due to board politics.
"You have president Sourav Ganguly's city (Kolkata), vice-president Rajiv Shukla's city (Lucknow), secretary Jay Shah's city (Ahmedabad), treasurer Arun Dhumal's city (Dharamsala).
"And there are four best stadiums in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Bangalore along with Hyderabad," a former BCCI office-bearer said, indicating that it's difficult to overlook any of these big venues.
The allotment of matches has always been a controversial topic in the BCCI and if the global event goes ahead as per plan, some tough calls will have to be taken.
"The BCCI has shown that two distinct bubbles at one given point in time work wonderfully well but the moment it's scattered to nine cities, it would be a nightmare with 16 teams in question," the source said.
(With PTI inputs)
