Post disease expected series'

Pakistan tour to England 2020 still on the cards

Being a cricket fan, it is something of advance Eidi for watching live cricket on the TV as England and Wales Cricket Board expects to convince the West Indian cricket board to tour the already locked down England. In the case of Pakistan, both the cricket boards have reached an agreement in principle after ECB assurances, as elite-level cricket plots a re-start after months of worldwide lockdown.

Conditions of post-COVID19 playing situations

The two boards had a meeting on Friday where the ECB talked the PCB through plans for keeping players in a strict bio-secure environment, from the moment they land in the country through the three Tests and three T20s they are scheduled to play.

• Working plans include flying the Pakistan squad into the UK on a chartered flight in early July
• Allocation of one venue as a base, where they can not only carry out their training and intra-squad practice games
  
• Mandatory two-week quarantine period put in place by the United Kingdom government for all visitors from outside the country.

Vincy Premier T10 League to begin on May 22 in the Caribbean

This will be the inaugural season of the VPL, a six-team tournament, which will be played from May 22 to 31 at the Arnos Vale Sporting Complex in St Vincent. It is going to the first time since March, competitive cricket involving international players of a Full Member team is set to return after a long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Vincy Premier League (VPL), a franchise-based T10 tournament, is scheduled to start from May 22 in the eastern Caribbean country of St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is going to be the first time the game will resume in a Full Member region comprising international players.

Playing conditions

• The VPL will also become the first tournament where the players will not be allowed to use saliva on the ball,
  
• a concept that the ICC and medical experts at various cricket boards have been discussing, as reported recently by ESPNcricinfo.
  
• The tournament is set to be open for fans as there are no restrictions imposed by the government in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
• The VPL comprises 30 matches,
  
• Games are going to be streamed live, with three games scheduled per day.
  
• A total of 72 players were picked by the six franchises via a draft held on May 11.
  
• Among them are six marquee players, including three West Indies players - seamer Kesrick Williams, opening batsman Sunil Ambris and left-arm fast bowler Obed McCoy.

• The VPL will be hosted by St Vincent and the Grenadines Cricket Association (SVGA), whose president, Kishore Shallow, is also the vice-president at Cricket West Indies (CWI).

• Shallow said the VPL was put together in the last two weeks after he was approached by Dream 11, an India-based sports technology company.
  

• He then alerted CWI and sent in a formal request via the Windward Island Cricket Association (of which the SVGA is a member) asking for the VPL to be sanctioned.
  

• Shallow said he had spoken to both CWI chief executive Johnny Grave and CWI cricket operations manager Roland Holder about the VIPL.
  

• "We have formally written to CWI. And I expect to get a positive response from them soon," Shallow told ESPNcricinfo.

• According to Shallow, there were a total of 18 positive cases of Covid-19 in St Vincent and the Grenadines as of Wednesday, of which 10 had successfully recovered which means total active cases count to 8.
  

• Keeping in mind the risk posed by the pandemic, Shallow said the tournament had the "endorsement" from the local government and the ministry of health.
  

• He said the players would not be "exposed to the public" and all necessary precautions as advised by the government would be ensured including having additional short breaks at various points during the match where players would be asked to use hand sanitizers.

• Shallow said that since there was no "formal limitations in terms of social gatherings" imposed by the local government the organizers had decided to not play behind closed doors, a mandatory policy issued by several other countries around the globe to sporting organizations.
• "What we have been doing is managing the risk. So what we plan to do during the tournament is ask spectators to practice social and physical distancing. So they will be sitting at least a few seats apart. And because of the time the matches are taking place, we do not anticipate a massive crowd at the matches."
• Shallow said all the league matches would start at an "unusual time", 8.30am local time and go on until 2pm only to "capture" the Indian audience where Dream 11 has its wide user base.
• "We came up with this T10 franchise format because of the absence of sports content at this point, and thought that this brand of cricket would be enticing to cricket fans across the globe in a short duration," Shallow said at the launch of the draft on May 11.

Trivia

The last recognised match before Covid-19 halted games across the world was played on March 15 when the Karachi Kings hosted the Quetta Gladiators in the PSL which Quetta won following the heroics of Khurram Manzoor, the only game he played off the 2020 event.

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