New Zealand Cricket Have Denied Speculations Of It Hosting IPL 2020:
New Zealand Cricket neither agreed to host the Indian Premier League 2020 nor received an invitation from the Control Board for Cricket in India to do so, NZC explained. There were rumors on July 6 that New Zealand agreed to host the tournament in case it was pushed out of India. Nevertheless, NZC has swept aside these claims as speculation.
“The article is just speculation. We didn’t want to host the IPL, nor did we have an approach,” said Richard Boock, New Zealand Cricket spokesperson for Radio New Zealand.
The IPL was expected to take place in March-April, but was postponed indefinitely due to the situation of COVID-19 in India. With the ICC T20 World Cup scheduled to be postponed, the BCCI could look at the September-October window of the tournament.
BCCI President Sourav Ganguly recently said the Board wants to host the IPL this year. “We want to have it, as I said cricket needs to be back,” Ganguly said at a TV show.
“For us, it’s off-season at the moment that really benefited us. We finished the home season in March and then we had to cancel the IPL, which is the most important aspect of our home season. We want IPL to happen because life needs to be back to normal and cricket needs to be back to normal, but we don’t have an ICC announcement about the T20 World Cup.
“We keep hearing various things from the newspapers, but when it’s officially not told to the board members and countries, you don’t know what’s going on. But we want to host it, our first priority is India. No matter what time we get, even if we get 35-40 days we’ll host it.”
The IPL has played out of India in the past due to the country’s general election. The 2009 edition took place in South Africa and portions of the 2014 edition took place in the UAE.
