IPL 2019: No Change In Match Timings, Evening Matches To Start At 8 PM

There will be no change in the timings of Indian Premier League matches, it was confirmed on Thursday. COA Chairman Vinod Rai confirmed that there is no change in time of the matches.

Earlier, it was expected that the evening matches might have an early start by one hour. The idea has been dropped now.

Last year, the playoffs matches of the tournament started at 7 PM after which there were speculations that the matches will kick an hour early this year.

However, the move could not have been feasible as in case of double-headers, the fans would have missed out on action due to timings of matches overlapping each other.

An evening match starts at 4 PPM and in case the second match would have started at 7 PM, the two matches would have overlapped each other in double-header days.

“We welcome BCCI’s decision to retain the match timings. Like last year, we wanted the games to have an 8 pm start. This time, we were not yet approached by the BCCI regarding match timings but we were eagerly awaiting its decision,” a team official was quoted as saying by PTI.

Still, the playoff matches are expected to start at 7 PM only just like last year. A decision on this is expected to take place in the month of May.

The upcoming season of IPL will kick off on March 23. Defending champion Chennai Super Kings will face Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening game of the season at M Chinnaswamy stadium.

For now, BCCI has only announced the fixtures for first two weeks of IPL.

Earlier this week, the board had confirmed that the fixtures of rest of the tournament will be announced after The Election Commission of India announces the schedule for General Elections.

It is almost sure this year that few of the teams might not get to play seven matches at their home ground due to security reasons.

Earlier, there were even doubts that the tournament will be played in India. Though BCCI kept the tournament in the country.

In 2009, full tournament was played in South Africa while in 2014, the initial phase of IPL was played in UAE.

This year, this wasn’t the case as BCCI managed to keep the tournament in India completely.