Board of Control for Cricket in India Treasurer Arun Dhumal said the board could suffer huge losses if the Indian Premier League is not held and the Covid-19 pandemic carries on for a long time.
“We’ll be able to assess it once we know when we’re going to start [the cricket],” Arun Dhumal told Cricbuzz.
“As of now, every bilateral that we miss, we’ll be losing money. And if we’re not able to organise IPL then that’ll lead to a big hit. Not having an IPL would end up with a revenue loss of about Rs 4000 crore,” Dhumal added.
Dhumal also said that most of the cricket boards would prefer playing bilateral series over ICC events as they are more profitable.
“Now every cricket board will be struggling because of the virus. That (bilateral series) adds more money to any cricket board,” he said.
“If individual cricket boards survive then only ICC survives, isn’t it? It’s not that ICC on its own can survive and feed all the cricket boards,” he added.
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Dhumal said the Board has several ideas to recover the losses and get cricket back on its feet once the pandemic eases but there’s no clarity on which plan would work.
“We have many, many thoughts as of now. We need to discuss all of this with counterparts in ECB, CA and all other boards and then we’ll work out a strategy,” he said.
“We haven’t mulled over this idea and this needs to be worked out with the broadcaster also, you have to certainly make compromises if we’re going ahead with two teams. We need to think through this and see what best can be done,” he added.
Speaking on the impact of the lockdown on domestic cricket, Dhumal said BCCI would do everything to get the domestic season started as planned.
“The domestic season was supposed to resume by July-August. Hopefully, that’ll be set. In case it (the break) carries on for some time, that will also get impacted,” he said.
“As of now, the priority is to set right the stadiums and infrastructure because everything is under lockdown... For every sportsman or a cricketer, one season is a big, big thing in his career. We would not want anybody to lose out on that,” he added.
The Treasurer also said that BCCI would not prioritise men’s cricket over the women’s game but said it could feel the financial pinch due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ideally, we want women’s cricket to flourish and we will plan for that because that is also gaining ground,” Dhumal said.
“Unfortunately, this has happened. But we will consider everyone. Everyone will feel the heat, but we’ll want everyone to get equal opportunities,” he added.