After the sad news of postponement of the T20 World Cup 2020 this news is all set to bring smiles on the faces of cricket fans across the world. IPL 2020 is all set to start in the UAE on September 19th with the final likely to be played on 8th November 2020. This won't be the first time IPL moves out of India, the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League was played entirely in South Africa and in 2014 half of it was placed in UAE itself. IPL 2020 was decided to start on 8th March 2020 but then this Covid-19 pandemic broke out across the world and the tournament kept getting postponed. All this while there were voice in favour of having an IPL in this year itself with the fans and players leading in this regard, and while all of this was happening boards of Sri Lanka and the UAE put their hands up to host it for the BCCI. And after a lot of thinking and considerations the board zeroed on the UAE as the host for the 13th edition of the world's most popular franchise Cricket League IPL.
The UAE was always having the upper hand, not only because it has already hosted this tournament succesfully in the past, but also because of its current quarantine guidelines. At the moment there are no quarantine issues in the UAE, the players can fly in the country, get themselves tested negative for Covid-19 and they can join their squads immediately. Of course all of these is subject to clearance from both the UAE and Indian governments. But this is all ready to be a 51 days tournament with 5 weeks having double headers in the 7 week long tournament. The teams though will definitely need time to get prepared, the players will definitely need time to get match ready and get back themselves in this kind of things that is why all the teams are expected to reach the UAE by August 20th, which will give them a good 4 weeks of time for the players to prepared and get back in the swing of things. Of course minor details will be finalized in the IPL GC meeting which is scheduled later this week. But this news is all set to bring smile on every cricket fans face across the globe specially for Indian fans who are eagerly waiting to witness there cricketing heroes back in action after cricket resumes in various parts of the world.
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