Daily Times

MELBOURNE: The International Cricket Council (ICC) may continue to insist that this year’s men’s T20 World Cup in Australia has not yet been postponed, but Cricket Australia chief executive Kevin Roberts said on Friday there’s “a very high risk about the prospect” of the tournament taking place as planned in October-November. Roberts’ comments came a day after the emergence of a communication from CA chairman Earl Eddings to the ICC in which he asked for Australia to be able to host the event in the same window next year. The tournament, featuring 16 teams (including eight qualifiers for four spots), is scheduled to be held between October 18 and November 15, but as reported earlier this week, there is a strong likelihood of the event being postponed, something the ICC said on Wednesday was “inaccurate.” On Thursday, the ICC board was meant to discuss the postponement and contingency planning, but eventually deferred that discussion to June 10. “The timing of the men’s T20 World Cup is really a matter for the ICC,” Roberts said on Friday in a virtual media briefing. “Obviously, we’ve been hopeful all along that it could be staged in October-November. But you’d have to say that there’s a very high risk about the prospect of
that happening.”

In case the World Cup does get postponed, Roberts said there were a few potential windows to stage the event in 2021 and 2022. “In the event that that doesn’t happen, there are other potential windows in the February-March period, October-November the following year. We are exploring all options, from chartered flights in from other countries through to creating bio-security bubbles in different venues, and it may well be as much as we’ve released the schedule and we have for example four Indian Tests scheduled for four states, that assumes that state borders are open to domestic travel.” However, Roberts stressed that the ICC would have to “deal with a lot of complexity” in order to work out an alternate window, especially since India are scheduled to host the 2021 men’s T20 World Cup (scheduled for October-November) and the 2023 men’s ODI World Cup (scheduled for February-March).

Roberts said that in case the World Cup is ruled out this year, CA would suffer a potential loss of approximately A$20 million (US$13.3 million approx.). As far as the international summer is concerned, CA has forecast a shortfall of around A$80 million (US$53.3 million approx.). Roberts said that about A$10 million (US$6.66 million approx.) would be spent on creating the biosecure environment that is being considered for cricket to resume with precautions.