The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association has announced that the State cricket league will not start on its scheduled date of June 10 due to novel coronavirus pandemic. No new dates or a revised schedule has been confirmed for the Tamil Nadu Cricket League 2020.
The State cricket body though is optimistic about staging the fifth edition of the league this year.
“The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association has decided to postpone the 5th edition of TNPL tournament which was to start from June 10,” TNCA honorary secretary RS Ramasaamy said in a Press release on Monday.
The revised schedule will be released in due course, the release added.
The final of the eight-team league was scheduled for July 12 this year.
The countrywide lock down, which had entered its fourth phase since May 18 and will remain in force till the end of the month, has also resulted in an indefinite deferment of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s Indian Premier League.
It is being assumed that the IPL may still be squeezed into a short window between September and November with a strong likelihood of the ICC T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia being deferred to next year.
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The TNCA is meanwhile exploring options to finish the TNPL by the third week of August to avoid any clash with the expected dates of the IPL 2020. “We have two other windows before September. One of the options is to start TNPL on July 15 and end it by the middle of August. Or we could begin on August 1 and finish it in about 20 days so that there is a gap between TNPL and the IPL,” Ramasaamy has told national daily The Hindu.
“We will be having matches at Salem, Coimbatore, Natham and Tirunelveli. The reassuring factor is that all these four centres are in the green zone. That makes our job easier.
“We will need about a month to get the grounds and the floodlights ready. We are confident. Our organisational capacity is excellent.”
The Union Government and the States have allowed to open the sports facilities and stadiums with a rider that the ban on the spectators will stay in force during live events.
Tamil Nadu, the second worst hit State in India, has so far reported nearly 12,000 Covid-19 confirmed cases. The consolation, however, remains a low mortality rate with less than a 100 deaths – far below the States like the most-affected Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.