Covid-19 pandemic makes India an untenable host:
For the 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup, UAE and Sri Lanka are among the back-up venues after the COVID-19 has made India an unsustainable host. Last week, ICC gave confirmation that India will host the 2021 tournament as scheduled in the Future Tours Programme while 2020 edition in Australia goes ahead in the year 2022.
For every event of ICC, finding potential back-up venues is normal practice, but in this time it takes extra importance due to the pandemic. Now, India is the third-worst hitting nation in the whole world struggling with COVID-19. Nearly 2 million cases are registered so far and more than 45,000 deaths. The current circumstance pressurized the BCCI to shift the IPL to the UAE, and only some particular domestic tournaments are going to be staged.
As per now, the BCCI has remained persistent to host the 2021 T20 World Cup in spite of 2022 because the cricket board doesn’t want yo host three big events (2022 T20 World Cup, 2023 IPL and 2023 World Cup continuously.
Many confusions are surrounded on these tournaments, which included deferment of the Women’s World Cup to 2020 also because initially, Cricket Australia showed interest to host the tournament in 2021.
The chairman of Cricket Australia, Earl Eddings had written to ICC in May asking for the tournament to get postponed and Australia would host the event in the year 2022. At that time, Australia finished its lockdown period successfully. As per the Finance & Commercial Affairs, (F & CA) committee, Australia, staging the tournament next year in Australia was the least risky option.
