IPL News: After almost a week since the suspension of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 season, there is still not much clarity on how the wide spread coronavirus entered the robust team bio-bubbles. Firstly, the duo of Varun Chakravarthy and Sandeep Warrier from the Kolkata Knight Riders camp tested positive for Covid-19, then 3 non-playing members from the Chennai Super Kings contracted the virus and eventually the tournament had to be postponed indefinitely with Wriddhiman Saha (Sunrisers Hyderabad) and Amit Mishra (Delhi Capitals) also testing positive.
IPL News: Main Reason for IPL suspension
The cricketer turned commentator Aakash Chopra recently explained the main reason for the postponement of the IPL. Chopra mentioned that air travel surely was the biggest issue in this edition of the IPL as last year all the travel was done by road in the UAE. Many of the teams did use their private terminals for the boarding of flights this season but the facility was not available in all cases. The former Indian cricketer also noted that the covid situation in the country is much worse right now than it was in the UAE in 2020.
“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,” said Aakash Chopra on his YouTube channel.
“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.
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“Going to multiple grounds for practice was another issue,” reckons Aakash Chopra
With four teams staying in Delhi for a number of days, the franchises had to use multiple grounds for practice purposes. Aakash Chopra stated the groundsmen at the Palam or Roshnara in Delhi were not in quarantine and that was another major lapse from the logistics purpose. The popular commentator concluded by further adding that as the tournament was organised in multiple cities, booking the entire hotel for a single franchise was another area of concern this year in the IPL.
“Practice grounds, that’s another issue. If you are going to multiple grounds for practice and the groundsmen there are not in a quarantine, which is difficult to do everywhere in India. If you see the ground in Palam or Roshnara, the groundsmen don’t stay there and the Delhi numbers were absolutely through the roof.”
“Last but not least, 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,” Chopra concluded.
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