England tour likely with Australia’s T20 World Cup to be called off

The decision has been brewing for months and finally a call will be made on Australia’s T20 World Cup scheduled for October.

Australia’s Cricket World Cup is set to be cancelled. Picture: AAP

Cricket’s World Cup is set to be officially postponed this week as Australia’s players are told to start preparing for a comeback battle against England.

Training for a return to action in September is the strongest indication yet that Aaron Finch’s troops will head to Britain for a limited-overs tour in the biosecurity bubble, but elsewhere, the game remains in the grip of COVID-19.

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Not only will the axe finally fall on Australia’s Twenty20 World Cup tournament this Friday as a result of the pandemic, the multimillion-dollar IPL that is due to fill that void in October may have to be shifted to the UAE or Sri Lanka because of the worsening situation in India.

There is a feeling Australia may now have to wait until 2022 to host the World Cup, but at least confirmation of the cancellation of this year’s event will allow administrators around the world to start mapping out how the game will relaunch over the coming months.

While the limited-overs tour to England is still to be locked in, Australia’s quicks are building up their workloads for a return to play in September and players have been told to start preparing for another date against the Old Enemy — albeit a series of one-dayers and T20s, not Tests.

The England Cricket Board is increasingly confident the series will happen.

Britain has proposed quarantine-free travel for the Australian team and unless this week’s Test series between England and the West Indies goes pear-shaped inside the bubble, it’s expected Australia could be on its way over by mid-to-late August.

Officially calling off the World Cup will in turn allow Indian officials to lock in details for its opportunistic IPL, which could be worth up to $800m for cricket and could see Australian superstar Pat Cummins net most of his record $3.17m deal.

If Cricket Australia signs off on giving players permission to attend the IPL, the ideal scenario would be that they could go straight from the England limited-overs series to wherever the T20 league is held in the Middle East or Asia.

It would save players from potentially having to quarantine twice back in Australia and then in the country where the IPL will be held.

If India is still able to host the IPL, it’s understood it would limit matches to a select number of locked-down venues, possibly in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

But in that scenario, players would have to decide whether they were prepared to risk being in one of the worst-affected countries in the world.

The International Cricket Council board meeting on Friday won’t necessarily determine when the World Cup will be moved to.

Australia’s preference would be to host it in October next year, but at the moment India is scheduled to host that year’s tournament, and officials are fearing the local bid will be pushed back two years.

Fast bowlers around the country are back to bowling outside and are building up loads for September in any case.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH