IPL officials meet to save second edition

The fate of the season II of the Indian Premier League is hanging in fire. Even as the ‘postpone’ noises from the Government side are increasingly becoming louder, the IPL officials were cautiously confident of convincing the Home Ministry about the impossibility of putting off the League. They are, in fact, banking on the sole repercussion of a postponement — cancellation.

“We cannot put it off. That is now known to everyone, including the Government. So we are hoping to convince the Home Ministry,” said a top official of the IPL. Lalit Modi, the chairman of the league’s governing council, is yet to arrive in the country. He is expected here on Thursday.

A formal date for a meeting between IPL and the Home Ministry officials has not yet been fixed but it is expected to be held some time in the next 48 hours.

“The meeting will be attended by Modi and BCCI secretary N Srinivasan,” the IPL official said.

It is learnt that the IPL has forwarded a few alternatives — although not major ones — to the Ministry. “We’ve written to them suggesting the alternatives. We’re keeping the fingers crossed,” the official said.

It is not known what the suggestions are but one of the options the IPL is believed to be exploring is to juggle around the matches suitably with the polling dates. In that scenario, each organizing centre could get to host its quota of seven matches but not all of them would be their home matches.

For example, Mumbai could be getting to host a match that is not involving the Mumbai Indians even though they might get to host seven matches. The other option is to have more than one match on weekdays. Currently only weekends have two matches.

These suggestions, of course, need the approval of the franchisees as well but that is perceived to be the easier part of the whole process. The difficult part is to convince the government.

The IPL is also banking on Union Minister and former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Sharad Pawar. Pawar has already stated that security situation in India and Pakistan are not similar.

“In India, one need not worry about security like Pakistan. Our security forces are quite competent and public is alert,” he said adding: “It’s not about any pressure from the government. What they (government) want to say we will have to understand and respond accordingly. I will have to see the view of board and also the IPL teams,” he added.