MUM­BAI, In­dia – The In­di­an Crick­et Board (BC­CI) be­lieves it can cap­i­talise on the win­dow opened if the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil can­cels the Twen­ty20 World Cup lat­er this year.

The T20 World Cup is sched­uled to take place from Oc­to­ber 18 to No­vem­ber 15 in Aus­tralia but BC­CI apex coun­cil mem­ber, An­shu­man Gaek­wad, said yes­ter­day he did not be­lieve the show­piece would come off as planned due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

“I have my doubts that the T20 World Cup will be held this year,” said the for­mer In­dia Test bats­man said.

“About IPL, we can­not think of just now. It will de­pend on In­di­an con­di­tions and the win­dow is on­ly dur­ing this T20 WC which is Oc­to­ber-No­vem­ber.

“If the World Cup gets can­celled or post­poned, then on­ly IPL can hap­pen but then al­so it de­pends on what the con­di­tions are in In­dia.”

The BC­CI has post­poned the lu­cra­tive IPL in­def­i­nite­ly fol­low­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break which forced the gov­ern­ment here to en­force a strict coun­try-wide lock­down.

Al­ready, In­dia have con­firmed 107 000 cas­es and 3 300 deaths to be the 11th worst-hit coun­try glob­al­ly.

How­ev­er, gov­ern­ment have be­gun to slow­ly ease the sev­en-week lock­down ear­li­er this week with the re­sump­tion of some ser­vices but while sta­di­ums and sports fa­cil­i­ties were al­lowed to open, gath­er­ings of any kind have been pro­hib­it­ed.

Gaek­wad warned that even when crick­et re­turned, it would take on a dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion be­cause of the new so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures.

“Crick­et is not go­ing to be the same, the ap­proach would be dif­fer­ent,” Gaek­wad ex­plained.

“There will be no crowd in the sta­di­ums. Crick­eters are not used to play in emp­ty sta­di­ums. It will be one very dif­fi­cult as­pect of play­ing new type of crick­et.

“It may take an­oth­er two months or four months or more to re­sume crick­et. It is not the­o­ry that you can read and write. You have to per­form so noth­ing is go­ing to be easy.”

Sev­er­al West In­dies stars are ex­pect­ed to head­line the 13th edi­tion of the IPL with the likes of vet­er­ans Chris Gayle, Sunil Nar­ine, Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard, along with su­per­star An­dre Rus­sell some of the ma­jor draw­ing cards.

A pletho­ra of young Windies stars like Nicholas Pooran, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Keemo Paul, Shel­don Cot­trell, Fabi­an Allen and Os­hane Thomas are al­so set to fea­ture.

(CMC)