Australia chief selector Trevor Hohns expects players to forego IPL 2021 for national duty

With the ICC T20 World Cup slated to take place later this year in India, all the participating teams will be engaged in several white-ball games to get in the groove. For the same, Cricket Australia (CA) is planning to conduct a T20I tri-series featuring West Indies and Afghanistan just before the T20 World Cup in October. This means the series will potentially coincide with the remaining part of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021.

For the unversed, the 14th edition of the gala tournament was abruptly suspended on May 4 due to the COVID-19 crisis. Now, the remaining matches will take in UAE between September 19 and October 15. Hence, the lucrative league is all but likely to clash with the planned tri-series. This means the Australian players, having IPL contracts, will have to forego the T20 competition for national duty.

Australia chief selector Trevor Hohns indeed expects his players to do the same. “Around that time of the year, I would certainly hope so (that players forego the IPL for national representation). However, it will certainly depend on their commitments and what we think they should be committing to regarding their Australian commitments at that time,” Hohns was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.

Although Hohns definitely wants his players to prioritize national duty, he suggested that the matter could be discussed in future. “We haven’t looked at that yet and we haven’t heard from our players at this stage,” he added.

Seven Australian players pull out from West Indies, Bangladesh tour

Apart from the tri-series, Australia will travel to West Indies and Bangladesh for limited-overs series ahead of the T20 World Cup. On Wednesday (June 16), Cricket Australia announced an 18-man squad for the twin tours that missed seven prominent names. David Warner, Pat Cummins, Glenn Maxwell, Jhye Richardson, Kane Richardson, Marcus Stoinis, Steve Smith, who recently played in IPL 2021, have pulled out.

Although these players have been vital parts of Australia’s limited-overs side, Hohns hinted that some youngsters might snatch their places in the T20 World Cup squad with an impressive show in national colours.

“That will be an interesting discussion for us, there’s no doubt about that, depending on performances in the West Indies, particularly by some of the extra inclusions for this tour,” Hohns asserted.