Veroli Zhimo
The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) decision to indefinitely suspend the world’s richest cricket competition—the Indian Premier League (IPL), midway through the season after its players tested positive for COVID-19 proves that no one and no economic activity is safe until the pandemic is controlled.
Earlier when many within the cricket fraternity and outside started questioning the BCCI’s rationale for staging the IPL amid a public health emergency, the BCCI responded that it had “tried to bring in some positivity and cheer” amid difficult times for the country, in addition to sport being a job and revenue generator. However, keeping players protected inside the ‘bio-secure bubbles’ while the pandemic raged outside proved too tough.
A similar incident can be recounted in Nagaland wherein the 21st Dr T Ao Inter-District Football Tournament had to be cancelled following the detection of positive cases among players. The tournament which began on April 12 was temporarily kept in abeyance after 12 positive cases were detected on April 14. Subsequently, the organisers announced the cancellation on April 21.
While the BCCI may incur losses, it is unlikely that the indefinite suspension will damage the IPL brand, because cricket will continue to be a national pastime. But for lesser-known, up-and-coming players from Nagaland who view the Dr T Ao tournament as their ticket to success and financial compensations they would otherwise not have received, it is a hard blow.
What has happened with the IPL or the Dr T Ao tournament is a stark reminder that reviving economic activity to pre-pandemic levels will only be possible when the tools to fight COVID are efficiently deployed and the current surge is at least, brought down to manageable levels.
The first step towards this is the state government’s notification of severely affected areas like Kohima and Dimapur as containment zones and the ‘lockdown-like’ restrictions imposed in these zones. The challenge now, is that of governance—how the government at the state, district and local levels implement the measures.
