T20 World Cup should be held elsewhere, teams would be nervous about going to India: Mike Hussey

By PTI

SYDNEY: Former Australia batsman Mike Hussey, who tested positive for COVID-19 in IPL’s bio-bubble, has advocated moving this year’s T20 World Cup from India to the UAE as he feels teams will be “nervous” to travel there because of the raging pandemic.

Batting coach Hussey was among three members of the Chennai Super Kings contingent who contracted the virus during the IPL, which had to be suspended after cases were detected in four teams.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult in my view to play that tournament in India,” Hussey told ‘Fox Cricket’ upon his return to Sydney, where he is undergoing a 14-day quarantine.

Hussey had also spent two weeks isolating in India after testing positive for the virus in Delhi from where he was transported to Chennai in an air ambulance.

“We’re talking about eight teams in the IPL. I think there are probably similar number, maybe more teams coming in from overseas (for the T20 World Cup), there’d be more venues. As I said earlier, if they’re playing in different cities, that is when the risk goes up.

“I think they’ll have to look some pretty big contingency plans, perhaps looking at the UAE or somewhere like that that could host the World T20. I think there will be a lot of cricket boards around the world that’d be pretty nervous about going back to India for a cricket tournament,” said Hussey.

UAE has already emerged as the back up venue and the ICC is likely to take a call on the tournament on June 1.

Talking about his ordeal in India, Hussey said he had symptoms but he never feared for his life.

“At the time I thought I didn’t feel great, but not life-threatening or anything like that. But it does take its toll on you after a while I guess. My initial test came up as a weak positive, and we were sort of hoping the next would be negative and it’d be alright, but unfortunately I got retested the next day and that came back positive.

“To be honest, I had already started feeling some of the symptoms and so I was thinking, ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve got it’.”

“Plus I was sitting next to the bowling coach (L Balaji) on the bus a few times, so I thought, ‘If he’s got it then there’s a pretty good chance I’ve got it as well’,” he added.