The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday (May 4) decided to suspend all further matches of the Indian Premier League after several players and even ground staff were tested corona positive.
According to Rajiv Shukla, the vice-president of BCCI, the health of players is the first priority and the decision on rescheduling of the matches would be taken later on. The BCCI came to this conclusion after an emergency meeting held early in the day.
In all, half a dozen players are reported to be suffering from corona virus. After the suspension of the tournament steps are being taken to send the players back to their homes. This is very crucial as sources suggest that most of the players have fallen ill because of travelling to different venues though chartered flights have been arranged for them. Sources also claimed that no player had violated the bio-bubble.
The inaugural match of the IPL took place on April 9 when most of the states of India had already come in the grip of the second wave of corona virus. The final match, as per the earlier schedule, was to be played at the newly-built Narendra Modi Stadium on May 30.
Incidentally, all the six venues of the IPL matches are hotspots of the pandemic where hundreds of people have died in the last one month. They are Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
The continuation of the IPL when thousands of people are dying every day had come under heavy criticism from various quarters, including Australian players.
The decision to suspend the IPL matches took place after India recorded over 3.57 lakh new cases of COVID-19 and 3,449 deaths in the last 24 hours.
It needs to be mentioned that IPL 2020 was postponed before its inauguration and was rescheduled later in the year in United Arab Emirates. This time the matches continued even though the second wave was much more devastating.
