"How Can Pakistan Claim India Got World Cup Postponed": Madan Lal On IPL 2020 Criticism

IPL 2020 will get underway from September 19 to November 10 in the UAE. It will be the second time in history that UAE will host the lucrative tournament. The decision to move IPL 2020 to UAE was taken after the global governing council postponed the 2020 T20 World Cup to next year.

Following the decision to postpone T20 World Cup, a lot of Pakistan cricketers including Shoaib Akhtar had criticised the BCCI. They believe that the BCCI had influenced ICC to postpone the marquee tournament, in order to open the window for IPL 2020 to commence this year.

Madan Lal, a part of the 1983 World Cup winning squad, has now taken a swipe at the Pakistan cricketers and said that how can they claim that the BCCI got the T20 World Cup postponed. He also added that considering the epidemic situation, postponing the T20 World Cup was a fair idea.

“The Pakistan cricketers, a lot of them, don’t think at all before they speak. How can they claim that India has got the World Cup postponed?” Madan Lal told Sports Tak in an interview.

“Firstly COVID-19 was around and T20 World Cup is a different type of tournament. Considering the absence of crowd and sponsorship issues, ICC and Cricket Australia have taken the decision to postpone it, which is a good decision,” he added.

“The IPL was always going to happen. We had already thought of organising the IPL in September-October depending on the available dates. So we have planned the IPL according to that which is a very good thing,” he further said.

Earlier, former Pakistan cricketer Zaheer Abbas said that the decision taken by BCCI is not just with their country but every country likes to play T20 matches to make money as they know that their is a lot of funding involved in these format. His comments came after IPL 2020 was decided to be played in UAE.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians will put their title on defense in IPL 2020. The side has won the lucrative tournament in the year — 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 — under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma.