England tour of Sri Lanka rescheduled for January 2021 says SLC CEO
Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) CEO Ashley de Silva has said that England’s two-match test series against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, which has been postponed due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shutdown, has been rescheduled for January next year in 2021. England was scheduled to play tests in Galle and Colombo in March before the coronavirus outbreak shut down sport worldwide as countries introduced lockdown across countries to prevent the spread of the virus.
Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) CEO Ashley de Silva has said:
We are in the process of rescheduling the tours that have been postponed, England has been already rescheduled for the month of January next year but the dates have not been finalized. At the same time, we are also looking at exploring the possibility of rescheduling postponed tours and looking at the windows which are available and alternatives too. South Africa is one of the tours which we are looking at rescheduling. We are engaged in discussions with the member countries and see how it can be planned out.
There are also two other tours which are scheduled to take place with India and Bangladesh due to tour Sri Lanka in June-July and July-August respectively, We will explore the possibility of playing those two tours in another week or two.
There are many sports tournament cancelled or postponed due to Coronavirus outbreak:
- England’s upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka is postponed with the touring players returning home.
- Australia have pulled out of their tour of New Zealand with immediate effect.
- The two remaining India-South Africa ODIs in Lucknow and Kolkata were on Friday called of. Cricket South Africa will visit India at a later date to play three One-day Internationals.
- As most of you know, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has postponed the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 indefinitely. The IPL 13 which is scheduled to start from March 29, was postponed till April 15, but Prime Minister of India on Wednesday announced lockdown extension to fight the coronavirus pandemic in India till May 3, BCCI has postponed the cash-rich league until further notice.
- The final two one-day internationals between India and South Africa postponed
- Nepal’s T20 franchise cricket league, Everest Premier League 2020 season postponed.
- Road Safety T20 World Series featuring veteran players likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, also postponed to a later date.
- The two T20Is featuring Asia XI and World XI teams became the first cricket tournament to be postponed due to dangers of COVID-19.
- The fate of big ICC tournaments, Women’s ODI World Cup 2021, Men’s T20 World Cup will be decided once the situation gets better and even T20 World Cup could be pushed to 2021.
- ACA T20 Africa Cup Kenya 2020 (March 20-28) – postponed indefinitely.
- Malta v Czech Republic T20 series (March 14-15) – postponed
- ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Challenge League A (March 16-26) – postponed
- European Cricket Series events, Spain (March 16-20, 23-27) – postponed
- Thailand women’s quadrangular ODI series with Ireland, Netherlands and Zimbabwe (April 3-11) – cancelled
