IPL to be played outside India
The decision has been taken that the Indian Premier League cannot take place in India due to security concerns. South Africa and England have been mooted as possible alternative locations for the tournament.
The IPL was scheduled to clash with the Indian elections and it was regarded as an impossible strain on the security services for both events to take place at the same time. The safety of the players could not be guaranteed and the concern was that some major names would withdraw, undermining the whole tournament. With the international cricket calendar so busy, the option to move the IPL to a different time was not really a viable one.
It is another severe blow to cricket in the subcontinent which must be said to be in real trouble now. With Pakistan a no-go area and the Mumbai bombings raising concerns over safety in India, there is a real prospect of teams refusing to head over to that part of the world at all. That would be devastating for the global game.
However it is encouraging that the Indian cricket authorities, notoriously so stubborn, have ceded to the recommendations of the security experts. It would not have been much of a surprise had they decided that money talks and that their precious tournament must go ahead as planned come what may.
Personally I hope that the tournament does not move to England. Quite how it would fit into the already extremely crowded calendar is a mystery and with the Twenty20 World Cup to be held here we could get a serious overload of the shortest form of the game. A decision is expected in the next couple of days.
