There is no stopping the Indian Premier League (IPL) from coming back this year. On Sunday, the Board of Cricket Control in India have finally announced the full schedule of the upcoming IPL season and fans are just happy to know that it will be a full one and that the matches will take place in India.
Last year, many fans and people in the cricket business thought that the IPL wouldn’t be able to push through because it was in March when the pandemic started. Many major sports events were either canceled or postponed and one of them was the IPL. Fortunately, the league was able to come back in September, and so it wasn’t hard to predict that it will be able to come back this year.
IPL Upcoming Season Details
This season is scheduled to start on April 9 and will take place in Chennai. The final match of the league will be held in Ahmedabad. The first match will be between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore and the final match will be between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and Punjab Kings.
These are just two of the matches that fans are looking forward to seeing and wager on Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kolkata Knight Riders odds and head-to-head stats are also well-searched right now as the two teams are scheduled to face each other on April 11.
In total, there will be 56 matches that fans can look forward to and a total of six venues where these matches will be held. The six venues are Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Delhi. Ahmedabad and Delhi will host 8 matches each and the rest will host 10 matches each.
All matches will also be played at neutral venues which means no team will be able to play at their home stadiums. Each team is also only set to play at four venues. The BCCI has pointed out that they have scheduled the matches in a way that travel could be lessened so that there will be fewer risks too.
BCCI president, Sourav Ganguly, explained that the IPL travel plan was mapped on similar lines to the India-England Series. He spoke with India Today about this and said, “We’ve done it in clusters,” he said. “So there will be three flights maximum for every team, hopefully, we’ll manage. Because, see, with the England tour, India have gone to Chennai, Ahmedabad and will go to Pune. And also the domestic teams [would’ve traveled to a couple of venues – one for group stages and another for knockouts]. We’re trying to do it that way only. Hopefully, it’ll be fine, the numbers are much less, it’s a lot better but fingers crossed.
“It’s a huge tournament. The BCCI did it successfully in Dubai and hopefully, we’ll be able to get through this time as well.”
Are Crowds Allowed This Year?
BCCI secretary Jay Shah included in the IPL schedule announcement last Sunday that the first matches of the season will be held behind closed doors. Whether crowds will eventually be allowed on the latter part of the season will still have to be decided at some point.
While this sounds like there is a possibility that crowds will eventually be allowed at some point of the season, Ganguly seems to be thinking differently.
In his recent interview, his statements seem to be leaning towards not allowing any crowds at all this year. This is even if Chennai and Ahmedabad venues were allowed to fill up 50 percent of the stadium capacity for the last three matches of the Test series against England.
When asked about whether crowds will eventually be allowed, Ganguly said, “Don’t know yet, depends on the situation. [The IPL] is slightly different than a bilateral [series]. If you open up to crowds, teams are playing in middle. Teams are practicing outside as well. A lot of these stadiums have practice pitches outside, and teams practice there because they play every day. So to open it up to crowds, you expect them to get closer to the practicing teams. So that could be a bit of a risk.”
Ganguly also said that they have adopted a similar crowd policy in 2020. He said, “Dubai also was the same: we started closed doors and expected to open out to the crowds, but since it went so well, we didn’t take the risk of having crowds back, so we’ll see.” #KhabarLive #hydnews
