Daily Times

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is aiming to hold the remaining Pakistan Super League (PSL) VI in June, after the Twenty20 competition had to be suspended last week following a spate of COVID-19 cases among players and officials. The PCB abruptly suspended its flagship tournament after seven people, including six players, tested positive for COVID-19. The PCB, the franchises and the league’s governing council have now decided to resume the tournament in Karachi. “This was unanimously agreed by the six franchise owners and the PCB in a virtual meeting held on Thursday afternoon and after taking into consideration all factors relating to event organisation,” a spokesman for the PCB said yesterday.

The PCB is also working to restructure their coronavirus protocols, which have come under severe fire in the wake of the season stalling in very abrupt fashion last week. A two member independent committee consisting of infectious disease specialists has been established, which will both help the PCB get to the bottom of how an outbreak broke out inside a bio-secure bubble and advise them on stricter safety measures so that it doesn’t happen again. “The PCB management will now look into the operational and logistical challenges and revert to the franchise owners and stakeholders,” the spokesman added.

The PCB and the six franchises met twice over the last four days to discuss a suitable window to complete the remaining 20 games. Initially, they zeroed on a slot spread over March and April but that was based on the PCB being able to convince Cricket South Africa to postpone their home series against Pakistan. It couldn’t. That tour will go ahead as planned later this month. So, the PCB settled on June as “the most preferred and practical” solution. The PSL will resume at some point between May 13 and June 26, after Pakistan tour to Zimbabwe and before their departure for England in the summer. Pakistan, largely, don’t play any cricket in June when summer is at its peak. There was one exception though, in 2008, when they hosted their first ever Asia Cup between June 25 and July 6. This time they’ve agreed to play the PSL in this window and keeping player welfare in mind they’ve picked Karachi as the venue instead of Lahore because the weather there is considered to be milder even during the summer months. With the threat of Covid-19 still around, it isn’t clear if PCB will once again use its own medical team to create the new bio-secure bubble. After lax management the first time, with several franchises reporting several breaches, it is quite likely that the PCB will outsource the job of setting up the bubble to a specialist firm.