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Former Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar isn’t happy at all with the postponement of the T20 World Cup. The mega event was expected to take place in October in Australia. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the International Cricket Council (ICC) to hold off the tournament. It has also opened a window for the BCCI to arrange the Indian Premier League (IPL) now.
Shoaib Akhtar reckons that the T20 World Cup has been postponed only for the Indian T20 to take place. He feels that the BCCI has used its power to cancel the event and believes that the world event could’ve gone ahead. However, Cricket Australia (CA) had the time and again cleared earlier that hosting the WC in these circumstances isn’t possible.
“T20 World Cup could have also happened, but I had already said this earlier that they won’t let it happen. IPL should not be damaged, let the World Cup go to hell,” he stated while speaking to Geo Cricket on a Youtube show.
Shoaib Akhtar also regretted the fact that the Asia Cup was also postponed. India and Pakistan facing each other in the tournament would’ve been a great prospect, according to him. “Asia Cup could have happened, and it would have been a great chance for India and Pakistan to play against each other. There are many reasons for this. I don’t want to get into that,” he further added.
Surprisingly, the former Pakistan cricketer Basit Ali has denied BCCI’s role in postponing the T20 World Cup. Instead, he slammed the critics who are blaming them for the same and advised them to research properly first before making any claims. Moreover, he also mentioned that it was ICC’s ex-Chairman Shashank Manohar who didn’t want the IPL to happen and, for the same reason, the decision to postpone the T20 World Cup was delayed.
“It was a clear tactic of Shashank Manohar (the ex-Chairman of the ICC), the World Cup should have been postponed 1-1.5 months back, I am sorry the Indian viewers might feel bad, he did not want the IPL to happen. That is my opinion I have said this before also. He played the delay tactics,” he stated.
