BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has shared that the Asia Cup 2020, which was scheduled to be played in UAE in September, has been cancelled. While the Asian Cricket Council (ACB) is yet to announce the official news, Ganguly, shared the news with Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika.
Interestingly, the announcement came just a day before the scheduled meeting of Asian Cricket Council (ACC) on July 9.
“The Asia Cup has been cancelled. It’s difficult to say which will be India’s first international series,” Sourav Ganguly said in an Instagram live chat. “We’ve done our preparations but we can’t do much till we know the government rules. We are not in a hurry because the health of players is of the utmost importance. We are monitoring things monthly.”
However, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief, Ehsan Mani, told Sportstar initially that they didn’t hear anything from ACC yet. But he also added that ACC are now eyeing to host the tournament next year.
“It was decided that Pakistan will swap the tournament with Sri Lanka. In principle, no one is certain that it’s possible to hold the tournament this year. So, we are looking at next year,” Mani, who is in England, shared.
Notably, Pakistan had the rights to host the tournament this year but they had agreed to swap the tournament with Sri Lanka. Although the future of the tournament looked blurry amid the critical situation due to COVID-19 pandemic which has brought the entire world into a standstill.
However, there was an issue regarding its hosting since the beginning. According to the original ACC policy, the hosting rights are with the PCB, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) refused to send the players to Pakistan owing to the political tensions between two nations.
Notably, India and Pakistan only play in ICC events and not the bilateral series anymore. Hence, there was a possibility that the Assia Cup could have been played at a neutral venue. However, PCB CEO shared that Asia Cup will go ahead in either Sri Lanka or UAE in future.
“We discussed it at the last ACC meeting and I spoke to Sri Lanka because we were uncertain about the situation in the UAE and Sri Lanka conveyed that the situation is much better there. So, we have asked for more details from Sri Lanka,” Mani had said earlier.
While the situation has been getting better slowly in some places, England have hosted their first International series against West Indies. They will take on Pakistan later on. Hope India too get the chance to enjoy the action soon.
