IPL 2021 to go ahead as planned - BCCI official

After successful staging of 29 games in the Indian Premier League, the Coronavirus has finally made its presence felt inside the bubble. Kolkata Knight Riders was set to lock horns with Royal Challengers Bangalore today but ahead of their game, KKR's Varun Chakravarthy and Sandeep Warrier tested positive for the Coronavirus which forced the BCCI to postpone the match to another date.

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The reports further stated that several Kolkata Knight Riders players are showing symptoms and thus have isolated themselves from rest of the squad. After this outbreak, a lot of experts were of the opinion that the BCCI might think about postponing the remainder of IPL. However, a BCCI official has confirmed that the IPL will go ahead as planned and no other match will be postponed for now. The official further stated that there is no need for the players who came in contact with the positive players to undergo isolation and they are tested for the Coronavirus daily.

The BCCI has been severely criticized for going ahead with the IPL despite the gloomy situation of the COVID-19 outside the bubble. The board had assured the players about their safety but the outbreak inside the bubble is a massive setback for the organisers. Several cricketers including the likes of Liam Livingstone, Andrew Tye, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa, Ravichandran Ashwin have already pulled out of the tournament and we may see a few more players opting out of the league now.

This was the first instance of any franchise reporting COVID-19 case after the start of IPL. Earlier, Nitish Rana, Devdutt Padikkal and Axar Patel tested positive for the virus but they contracted it outside the secure bubble.