T20 World Cup 2020 schedule under 'very high risk': Cricket Australia CEO Kevin Roberts

The upcoming T20 World Cup to be played from October 18 in Australia is under severe threat to get cancelled. Cricket Australia (CA) CEO Kevin Roberts has admitted that the tournament is under very high risk amid the ongoing pandemic. As many as 16 teams will take part in the mega event and it will be very risky for the host nation to have so many players together in this situation.

The COVID-19 situation in Australia is improving with every passing day. But the international borders are still closed and is not known if it is viable to open for travel or not. However, in March, ICC and CA both were hopeful of the T20 World Cup to go ahead. But Roberts is not sure now about the same and reckons they will have to look for an alternative window to host the event.

“Obviously, we’ve been hopeful all along that it could be staged in October-November but you would have to say there is a very high risk about the prospect of that happening. In the event that that doesn’t happen, there are potential windows in the February-March period, October-November the following year.

“And there’s implications here for the ICC over a number of years. So there’s a lot of complexity for the ICC to deal with,” he was quoted as saying by India Today.

ICC to have the final say on the matter

Meanwhile, the ICC will take the final decision on June 10 on whether to go ahead with the T20 World Cup this year or no. It was supposed to decide on Thursday but deferred all the meeting agendas to the said date. Earlier, it was reported that the mega event is set to be postponed to 2022 as it would not be viable to stage it in February-March next year with India also scheduled to host the tournament in 2021.

With no ICC event in 2022, the only option for the sport’s governing body is to postpone the competition to that year if it doesn’t happen this year.