Australian fast bowler Pat Cummins is hopeful this year's edition of the Indian Premier League will go ahead.
The start of the 2020 IPL has been moved from 29 March to 15 April as a preventative measure against the coronavirus pandemic. It might be subjected to more delays.
Cummins is part of the Kolkata Knight Riders squad, after being bought for a record sum at the IPL player auction late last year.
“In a perfect world and if I was to be really greedy, I'd love for the IPL to happen. Hopefully we can play as much of that as possible but there's so many more much bigger things at play. It's all out of our hands,” said Cummins.
“They obviously haven't cancelled it or anything like that yet. It's still a bit of a holding pattern, so we're in contact with our teams every few days. And obviously everyone is still really keen for it to go ahead, but the priority is to minimise risk of it spreading and everything else.”
Shortened IPL
Rajasthan Royals majority owner Manoj Badale recently suggested this year's IPL will be played across a shortened format. Whether that happens remains in the balance.
“Everybody is still really confident and hopeful it'll be played at some stage. But obviously it's going to be pretty tight, I think the Indian travel ban is in place until 14 April, so I don't expect anything too soon to happen. I mean obviously the preference would be to be over there playing, but I think the silver lining is we do get a bit of a break,” added Cummins.
“We're lucky in cricket, that it's right at the end of the season. We've played basically our whole season out, except for the last couple of games, and we're always looking for those small breaks to refresh. So at the moment we're just trying to – that's been the emphasis from the coaches and the staff, this is kind of our rest period anyway – if we weren't going to IPL.”
Cummins is accompanied by New Zealand fast bowler Lockie Ferguson, England batsman Tom Banton, West Indies all-rounder Andre Russell and other international stars in the Kolkata squad.