IPL 2020: VIVO exit as IPL sponsor not a financial crisis, says Ganguly

The BCCI president also admitted that the resumption of cricket in England has given confidence to other stakeholders about restarting the sport.

“BCCI is a strong foundation. The game, the administrators in the past have made it so strong that the BCCI is able to handle all these blips,” said board president Sourav Ganguly.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) suffered a blow a couple of days ago as its title sponsor, Chinese mobile phone maker Vivo, “paused” its partnership with the Indian cricket board for this edition of the Twenty20 tournament. But Sourav Ganguly, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and former captain of the Indian team, doesn’t want to call this phase a crisis.

“I would not call it a financial crisis. It’s a little bit of a blip and the only way you can do (overcome) that is by being professionally strong over a period of time. Big things don’t come overnight, big things don’t go away overnight. Preparation for a long period of time gets you ready for losses, and success,” Ganguly said in a webinar organised by S. Chand on Saturday.

The BCCI is yet to zero in on a replacement for Vivo. “BCCI is a strong foundation. The game, the administrators in the past have made it so strong that the BCCI is able to handle all these blips,” he said.

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Ganguly also admitted that the resumption of cricket in England has given confidence to other stakeholders about restarting the sport. “If you look at England, there is county cricket going on everywhere. There’s football happening; they just finished the Premier League. That gives you confidence that if they can go around the country and get cricket done, if we have the right medical staff and the teams are spread out in various venues and we do it clinically and professionally, I am sure we can get past this. There is no guarantee to anything. You have to believe in yourself,” the BCCI chief said.