No IPL Games In Kanpur This Year Says IPL Chairman, Rajiv Shukla

The exit of Gujarat Lions from IPL has also seen the exit of IPL games from Kanpur as Rajiv Shukla, the Chairman of IPL, has confirmed that there will be no IPL games this year in Kanpur due to non-availability of an airport in the city,

“This time none of the IPL team franchises are showing an interest in making Green Park Stadium their home ground. The reason behind this is the unavailability of the city airport. Whenever there is a match in Kanpur, cricketers have to first travel to Lucknow and then they come to Kanpur by road. This makes their travelling a hectic affair,” TOI quoted him as saying.

Kanpur was the second home ground for Gujarat Lions franchise who played its two games there in both the seasons. The first home ground of the franchise was the SCA stadium in Rajkot. With Gujarat Lions making an exit from IPL – due to the comeback of two banned franchises – the staging of IPL games at Kanpur has also come to an end.

No other franchise has shown interest to make Kanpur their home ground, due to various issues. It is to be noted that Rajasthan Royals are still looking for a new home ground but Shukla has also confirmed that they are not looking at Kanpur as their home ground.

On the other hand, Kings XI Punjab have confirmed that they will play their home games in Mohali and Indore, hence, Kanpur is not a prospect for them.

Few of the franchises had started looking for a new home base where they would play few of their matches. In past, Kings XI Punjab have played their few of the games in Dharamsala while Delhi Daredevils too have played its few matches at Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium Raipur, Chhattisgarh.

Not fully, but few of the franchises look for new home venues just to play few of games there, as was the case with Gujarat Lions too but this year, no franchise is looking at Kanpur as a prospect, which rules out this stadium from being in a race to hosting an IPL game.

Green Park last hosted a Test match when team India kicked off its long home 2016/17 season. India played New Zealand in the first Test from September 22 to 26. The last ODI there also came between India and New Zeland when the team teams met each other on October 29 last year.

The upcoming season of IPL will start in the first week of April.

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