In a huge setback for this year’s IPL, two players of Kolkata Knight Riders, Sandeep Warrier and Varun Chakravarthy have been tested COVID positive. It is an astonishing news, considering that today, Kolkata Knight Riders had to play a game against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
It is said that Chakravarti, had left the team bio bubble as, he had to go for a shoulder scan. Hence, the scheduled match for today, between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore has been postponed.
The match will now be played, on some other day in a revised schedule. With, the ever rising cases of COVID in India, positive cases are reaching up to 4 lacs a day. Hence, there were already a bit of fear of the COVID in the IPL teams.
Now with 2 players of Kolkata Knight Riders found to be positive, the sense of nervousness regarding the health will only increase. According to the medical camp of Kolkata Knight Riders, all the other players bar, Varun Chakravarti and Sandeep Warrier, have been tested negative.
The two players will now move to isolation room and will remain in quarantine for the next few days. In between, every other player of Kolkata Knight Rider will go regular testing for COVID.
Earlier, many Overseas players had, left the IPL due to this reason only. The players like Andrew Tye, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa and Liam Livingstone all pulled out of this year’s IPL.
Can the IPL be shifted to other venues?
Also, Ravichandran Ashwin who is the senior most spinner in the Delhi camp, had left the IPL few days ago. He did that, in order to be with his family who were struggling with symptoms of COVID. Moreover, two umpires in the form of Paul Reiffel from Australia and Nitin Menon, decided to pull out of this edition of IPL.
They too were stressed about the bio bubble life and wanted to take a break from it. With the cases now found in bio bubble of players, it will be interesting to see the reactions from other teams and their players.
Especially, many of the overseas players participation could be in doubt. More cases like this, and the continuation of IPL could be in jeopardy. One more option is that, if IPL stands postponed then, they could shift the remaining of IPL to places like UAE. They had hosted the previous edition of IPL anyway.
Although as of now, the BCCI has not made any official statement, about the future of IPL. Moreover only about half, of the IPL matches have been completed. The remaining half of the tournament is still to be played.
With the bio bubble now breached, the responsibility of safe conduct of the tournament, relies only in the hands of BCCI. They must take proper steps to counter the problems.
