Abu Dhabi: With the COVID-19 pandemic creating chaos worldwide, sports, like everything else, went into lockdown with no end in sight. So, when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced on April 15 that IPL 2020 had been postponed “indefinitely”, that sounded rather final. But the event had just too much invested in it by the franchises and other stakeholders to be done away with, so, after a lot of juggling, which included deferring the ICC T20 World Cup, fresh dates were set from Sept. 19.
The next thing to hit the tournament was the backlash after the border face-off with China, with outrage being directed at the title sponsors, a Chinese mobile phone company. So, the BCCI and the IPL Governing Council had to do some more firefighting before a new title sponsor was found.
