Australia Sports Minister reveals biggest hurdle ahead of ICC T20 World Cup

Melbourne, May 5: Australia sports minister Richard Colbeck believes that it is able to bring all the cricket playing teams to the country but considers the crowds one of the hurdles it will have to face ahead of the ICC World Cup 2020.

 

“I’d love to see an Australia-India Test series this summer and I’d really like to be able to see the World Cup go ahead... the issue is not so much the teams as the crowds and that’s probably one of the hurdles we really have to consider and probably one that world cricket will look at pretty closely as well,” Colbeck was quoted saying on Monday.

 

The lockdown all over the world to contain the deadly coronavirus and the travel restrictions have raised question marks over the future of the T20 World Cup and India’s tour of Australia in doubt. If these events will not take place as planned then the Cricket Australia will be suffering a loss of almost 300 million Australian dollars.

 

The T20 World Cup is scheduled to kickstart on October 18 but before that India's tour of Australia will begin with a T20 tri-series and end with a four-match Test series in December.

 

Colbeck said implementing vital protocols will help the teams to make them feel safe and healthy. "We all know the difference in atmosphere ... but in a team sense I’d like to think that we can build some protocols with the cooperation of the sport and the players, that’s going to be extremely important, with appropriate quarantine and bio-security protocols to see if we can make the competition go ahead."

 

The International Cricket Council recently had announced that it will go ahead with the plans of the 16-team tournament, however, a final decision will be taken by August. Australia is considering making travel exemptions for the Indian team’s tour Down Under to save the cricket board for the financial loss but Colbeck said they need to be careful in expanding exemptions to other nations for the T20 World Cup.

 

“Those conversations are being had, discussions about what the protocols might look like,” Colbeck said.”They will be difficult because one of the things that has been a key part of our success is that we limited access to Australia from areas where there were significant outbreaks of Covid-19 and that’s contributed to the low rate of spread we have now.”But we would have to be prepared to consider appropriate plans put forward by the various codes.”