World Cup or IPL: What’s more important? # The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Friday (28) announced that they will move the remainder of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 from India to UAE during September-October# The 31 remaining IPL 2021 matches are to be completed in UAE before the start of the International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 World Cup, scheduled in India during October-November# The current Covid-19 situation in India may prompt ICC and BCCI to move the World Cup too to UAE# Yet the BCCI has already requested ICC more time to make their final call on staging the World Cup# This is the second successive year that India was compelled to stage the IPL in the UAE# India is still continuing to be in the second wave of Covid-19 and the daily death rate is still above 3,000# Last year, Australia was scheduled to stage the ICC T20 World Cup from 18 Oct. to 15 Nov. 2020# On 2 Aug. last year, the IPL which was originally fixed for 29 March, was moved to UAE due to the pandemic, to be staged from 19 Sep. to 10 Nov. entirely overlapping the scheduled World Cup window# Then on 4 Aug., ICC postponed the T20 World Cup in Australia citing the Covid-19 pandemic# The 2020 T-20 World Cup in Australia was then moved to 2022 while the 2021 T20 World Cup, which India was initially set to stage, remained unchanged# Eventually last year, a national T20 franchise league got prominence over the T20 World Cup, organised by the sport’s world governing body# Why the T20 World Cup in Australia last year could have been moved to UAE by postponing the IPL, instead of postponing the World Cup? # Will a similar situation occur this year too as India moves IPL extremely closer to the T20 World Cup?
