COVID-19: No cricket in India in near future, says Ganguly

New Delhi: Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly has said that there will be no cricket in the country for the foreseeable future amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The cricket calendar has been on a standstill since coronavirus started spreading on a global scale and the World Health Organisation designated it as a pandemic on March 11.

However, in recent days, the graph of infections have flattened in a few countries and Germany could become the first to restart its football league. However Ganguly said that India is different from Germany.

"The social reality of Germany and India are different, there will be no cricket in India in the near future," Ganguly told TOI on Tuesday. "There are too many ifs and buts involved. More importantly, I don't believe in sport when there is a risk to human life."

India's home ODI series against South Africa was among the first cricket series to be called off. In the days since, New Zealand's tour of Australia, England's tour of Sri Lanka and the final leg of Bangladesh's tour of Pakistan were all postponed as well.

The 2020 Indian Premier League's (IPL) initial start date was first pushed back from March 29 to April 15 before it was postponed indefinitely as the nation-wide lockdown got extended until May 3.