T20 World Cup happening in 2020 under 'very high risk', admits Kevin Roberts

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In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, all cricket was either postponed or cancelled and now the future of the T20 World Cup is in jeopady. Meanwhile, the schedule released by Cricket Australia, on Thursday, raised many question marks over where it leaves the ICC Men's T20 World Cup to be held this year. Speculations suggested that due to the presence of no crowd, Australia have recommended that they host it at some point next year and let India postpone the 2021 T20 World Cup by a year. According to Roberts, there were potential windows-like February-March or October-November next year-in case it doesn't go as per the original schedule, of which he said, "there's a very high risk of happening".

"There are implications for ICC events over a number of years. A lot of complexity for the ICC to deal with. They need to be thinking about when to stage the men's T20 World Cup that's planned for Australia. There's another one planned in India a year later and then in 2023, there's the men's cricket World Cup (50-overs) for India as well. And not to forget on the women's side of the ledger, you've got the cricket World Cup in NZ early next year. The ICC is juggling a lot of balls there," Roberts said, as quoted by Cricbuzz.

However, the CA chief also revealed that the possible postponement of the T20 World Cup to next year would effect a loss of AUD 20 million on the Australian board. Roberts further shed light on the financial challenges that CA would be exposed to due to the unprecedented circumstances in this season. 

"The economic pain of the situation as we've heard from so many experts will be ongoing. And, so we are focused on delivering the best season possible noting that the likelihood of significant crowds is very slim. Ordinarily, that'll deliver well over 50 million dollars revenue to CA. It's likely that our biosecurity measures that we need to put into place to deliver our season will cost in the order of 10 million dollars. So, this is by no means an ordinary season in terms of the financial impact on Australian cricket," added Roberts.