Ashley Giles, ECB’s director of cricket, said England players are unlikely to miss international commitments in a busy calendar year to take part in the rescheduled Indian Premier League 2021.
Earlier this year, England rested and rotated some of their all-format cricketers through the winter tours to Sri Lanka and India in order for them to be available for the entire IPL. A decision that didn’t go down well at all in many quarters, especially as England lost all their three series on the tour of India.
The criticism only increased once it became very clear that England’s IPL-bound players will also miss the forthcoming Test series versus New Zealand in June. As many as four of England’s first-choice Test picks were all set to skip the Tests against Black Caps in case the IPL 2021 had gone on as scheduled.
Giles said the situation was more complicated than what people made it out to be as the New Zealand Tests were confirmed only in January and the ECB had by then signed NOCs for the national players to play the entire IPL. But Giles cleared, resting the multi-format stars during the series versus Sri Lanka, and India had nothing to do with the IPL 2021.
“We rested and rotated players based on the information we had on our fixtures. We didn’t rest them because of the IPL. We were left with incredibly difficult circumstances through Sri Lanka and India.”
“We didn’t think it right that any of our multi-format players did three months away in bubbles. It just didn’t seem fair beyond anything else and particularly it didn’t seem right for their wellbeing.”
he was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
Coming to the main issue, Giles indicated it is unlikely, though, that England players will be able to now take part in the rescheduled IPL 2021 whenever it takes place. England have a packed international calendar from the Tests versus the Kiwis in June this year to the tour of the Caribbean till March 2022, a period including the T20 World Cup and the Ashes.
Pragmatically, the only window for the BCCI to conduct the remaining 31 matches of IPL 2021 at this stage is a month between India’s Test series in England and the T20 World Cup. But in that short phase, England are due to travel to Bangladesh and Pakistan for limited-overs matches, which are key to the T20 World Cup preparation.
“I have mentioned to the players a couple of times, we will make difficult decisions on their workloads and wellbeing,” “We’re planning on the involvement of England players in England matches. We’ve got a full Future Tours Programme, if those tours [to Bangladesh and Pakistan] are going ahead, I’d expect them to be there.”
Giles also confirmed that the ECB didn’t consider asking their players to fly back home earlier from IPL 2021 despite the devastating COVID-19 wave in India. The surge of coronavirus positive cases here and suspension of international flights became a cause of anxiety among other overseas players and even triggered their early departure. But England players were set to play the entire tournament if it hadn’t been suspended.
“I don’t mean that we weren’t talking about it or thinking about it on a daily basis almost every hour that we were awake because that situation was changing a lot,” he said. “I thought our position was to advise and keep communicating with the guys and give them the latest information that was available to us, which they probably had on the ground as well.”
“But these guys are all grown-ups and they signed these contracts. Their relationships were with the franchises. But, of course underlying that, absolutely their welfare and their health is very important to us. But we didn’t really feel it was for us to pull them out of that scenario and probably they were the best judge on the ground. They were in it.”
Giles said.
