The BCCI has shortlisted 6 cities for IPL 2021 namely Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi. Mumbai has been added to the list on Saturday evening after local government gave permissions to conduct the matches in the city but ‘without fans.' The latest development wont please, Rajasthan Royals (RR), Punjab Kings (KXIP) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH).BCCI has decided to limit the 14th edition of the league to only 6 cities. As per the information available host cities for SRH (Hyderabad), Punjab Kings (Chandigarh) and RR (Jaipur) are not in the shortlisted list of cities that will conduct the IPL 2021.
As per a InsideSport.co report, the board is yet to communicate to the franchises on the latest development. “Whatever we hear we are hearing from media. IPL Governing council hasn’t communicated anything to us till date about the venues or the schedule. It will be heartbreaking for our local fans if our home city miss out on the IPL matches. It will be 2nd year in succession that IPL matches will not be conducted in our cities”, said one of the member of the franchise whose city is not in the shortlisted city list that will conduct the IPL 2021.To avoid most of traveling BCCI is also mulling over CARAVAN style of IPL edition this year. This means that the teams can be divided into two groups – with each group will play certain set of matches in the same cities before moving on to the next leg of matches in other cities. For now the BCCI has shortlisted 5 venues which is a clear indication that they want IPL 2021 to take place in India itself. With the increase in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country, there have been calls of moving the league to UAE for the consecutive year.
