Was HBL PSL6 postponement written in the cards?

Reports of families joining without quarantine, food being ordered suggest bio-secure bubble was just present on paper

KARACHI:

Thursday proved to be one of the saddest days in the history of Habib Bank Limited Pakistan Super League as the sixth edition was brought to a halt, following the emergence of more positive cases of Covid-19 in the teams.

Everyone was waiting for two other decisions to come out. HBL PSL management was mulling to move all the matches to Karachi to ensure no players contracted the virus during the shifting of the league to Lahore. Meanwhile, another decision to remove all franchise owners from the area near the boundary was also under consideration.

However, when the PCB press release came out, it said that a few more positive cases had emerged and the board and franchises will have a conversation over what to do next.

What happened next was nothing less than devastating for the cricket fans who were eagerly waiting to go to the stadium to watch the match on Thursday and then on the weekends. The HBL PSL sixth edition was postponed with immediate effect for an indefinite period.

The thought of going home and watching some cricket-ainment had become a norm in the past couple of weeks for every Pakistani.

The discussion of whether Lahore Qalandars would be able to continue their inspiring form and win the tournament was raging on. The question of whether Karachi Kings will be able to defend their title this year had just started catching fire. Meanwhile, just a day before Quetta Gladiators had broken the trend of the chasing teams winning the matches.

Multan Sultans and Peshawar Zalmi were charting their course to make comebacks in the tournament and qualify for playoffs, while Islamabad United were fighting hard to add a third HBL PSL trophy in their cabinet.

But, all the dreams of the young cricketers who were performing so well in the sixth edition and the all the wishes of veterans, who were showing consistency and form to make a strong case for the upcoming World T20, were shattered in a matter of hours.

Preliminary reports suggest that the onus of such a big breach in the bio-secure bubble created for the tournament lies on the PCB. It is being said that the plan for the bubble was just put on paper and was never implemented in its true essence.

Cricket Pakistan reported that food was secretly being ordered from outside the hotels where teams were residing in a bio-secure bubble. It was also reported that families of cricketers joined them without going through any quarantine period. Meanwhile, it was also said that the ground staff of the National Stadium of Karachi wasn’t included in the bio-secure bubble.

If any of this is true, then PCB surely needs to go back to the drawing board and find the loopholes in their planning which gave way for all or any one of such occurrences to happen, eventually causing the disruption of the whole event.

PCB Chief Executive Wasim Khan was correct when he said that the first 24-48 hours would be emotional for everyone, but he clearly stated that the Board of Governors of the PCB will now form a committee to investigate why this happened and who was responsible.

An unwanted question of whether Wasim or PCB chairman Ehsan Mani would resign after such a horrendous occurrence took the Chief Executive by surprise, but his astuteness helped him gather his thoughts and answer calmly that whoever was responsible for this episode will bear the consequences.

All in all, Pakistan had a good track record of holding cricket during the Covid-19 pandemic, where they organised a full domestic cricket season and hosted foreign teams as well without any hiccups, but the postponement of the HBL PSL6 will be written as a loss for the PCB in the years to come.

Also questions were raised whether the upcoming visit by the England cricket team would go on as per the schedule, but that is a query which can be answered later.

Right now, everyone wants to know just one thing: how did it come to this?