New Zealand Cricket Rubbishes Reports Of Hosting IPL 2020

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) has refuted reports that it has offered to host this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL). The thirteenth edition of the IPL was scheduled to take place between March 29 and May 17. However, the BCCI had to suspend the league indefinitely in the light of the pandemic.

But at the same time, the Indian cricket board has maintained that conducting the IPL this year remains its priority. The failure to conduct the tournament this year can see BCCI lose around INR 4,000 crore in revenues. BCCI president Sourav Ganguly recently said that the tournament is likely to be held in the second half of the year.

At the same time, he also stated that while hosting the IPL in India remains the top-priority, the BCCI won’t hesitate in taking the tournament outside of the country if the situation does not improve. The coronavirus pandemic is showing little signs of improvement in the country with cases increasing at an alarming rate.

In such a case, it is more or less clear that the tournament would be hosted outside India. The likes of Sri Lanka and UAE have already expressed their desire of hosting the IPL. And recently reports emerged that NZC are also interested in hosting the IPL.

However, NZC spokesperson Richard Boock has refuted the reports and have termed them as “speculation”. Broock said the cricket board has not expressed its interest to host the IPL.

“The report is simply speculation. We have not offered to host the IPL nor have we had an approach to do so,” Boock was quoted as saying by Radio New Zealand.

Well, hosting IPL outside India is not new for the BCCI as the board has done it twice in the past. Its 2009 edition was hosted by South Africa because of the general elections in India. Five years later, few of the games were held in UAE for the same reason.

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