Defending IPl, former Indian cricket captain Sunil Gavaskar on Wednesday rubbished talks of the IPl being the reason behind the scrapping of ClT20.
The suspension of IPl sides Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals and the scrapping of ClT20 happened in a span of 24 hours.
“There’s no connection. I think completely different, the Champions league has four teams from the Indian Premier league, three teams get direct entry, the fourth team has to play the qualifier and there are two teams from Australia, two from South Africa, so I don’t think anything to do with the IPl would have had an effect on the championship,” Gavaskar, who had once served as BCCI’s interim chief, told NDTV.
“It was pretty much like the T20 leagues all over the world, which are very popular. Caribbean Premier league (CPl), the Australian Big Bash are very well followed and even the T20 leagues in England and New Zealand. It’s hard to put a finger why a tournament like Champions league hasn’t been able to generate the same kind of interest,” he said.
“Maybe a different format could have been tried with two groups of five teams each and maybe something like that could have worked,” he added.