Asia Cup has been cancelled: Sourav Ganguly
With the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) scheduled to meet in 24 hours’ time, in an Instagram live session chat with Vikrant Gupta, BCCI President Sourav Ganguly unofficially announced the cancellation of this year’s Asia Cup.
Without going into much detail about whether the decision has been taken by the ACC or not, Ganguly, who turns 48 today, said, “Asia Cup has been cancelled. It’s difficult to say which will be India’s first international series. We’ve done our preparations but we can’t do much till we know the government rules. We are not in a hurry because the health of players is of the utmost importance. We are monitoring things monthly.”
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Ganguly also talked about the possibility of the IPL taking place in case the T20 World Cup is cancelled as well. Emphasizing that the BCCI would want to schedule the tournament on home turf, the former Indian captain said, “(If the T20 WC gets cancelled) then we will try everything to stage the IPL. It is very important for Indian cricket. We will try to host it in India. The cancellation of T20 WC will happen soon because all countries are asking for a direction from ICC. We’ll know by mid-July. My gut feeling is saying it’s tough.”
CA chairman Earl Eddings has already clarified the T20 WC was “unlikely” and “unrealistic”. He had stated , “It’s a bit of a moving feast at the moment. I’d say it’s unlikely, while it hasn’t been formally called off this year or postponed, trying to get 16 countries into Australia in the current world where most countries are still going through COVID-19 spiking is very, very difficult.”
The International Cricket Council are set to meet on July 17 to take a concrete decision on the fate of the tournament, after deferring the same in two of their previous meetings.
“The ICC is trying their best to stage the T20 WC because that brings in a lot of revenue. We don’t have a window for IPL yet because we have to play in Australia in December. That’s FTP and we can’t change that. Australia is one country where, apart from Melbourne, things are returning to normal,” said Ganguly.