Indian Premier League franchise Rising Pune Supergiants on Friday opted for Vishakhapatnam as their alternate home venue for matches after April 30, while Mumbai Indians asked for two more days to finalise their choice.
Both the teams were asked by BCCI to choose from four options after they were ordered to hold all matches outside Maharashtra after April 30 because of drought in many parts of the state.
Mumbai will have time till April 13 to choose from Raipur, Jaipur and Kanpur as alternate home venue. “We will request the court for one match in Pune but Mumbai will give its reply on April 17,” said IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla.
“We have asked for the first Qualifier and the final match to be played in Bengaluru and the other match, that is Qualifier 2, to be played in Kolkata. These are the proposals which will go to the Governing Council. We will go according to Mumbai High Court’s decision," he added .
The Bombay HC on Wednesday had ordered that all the IPL matches scheduled to be held in Maharashtra from April 30 onwards must be shifted out of the state.
A total of 13 matches were ordered to be shifted after a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) had questioned the hosting of matches in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur as the state is badly hit by drought.
Due to the court's ruling, Mumbai is going to miss four matches including the final, while Pune will miss out on six games including the Eliminator and a Qualifier.
The PIL, that was filed by the Foundation for Democratic Reforms and Loksatta Movement, had highlighted that the three IPL venues in Maharashtra were consuming 60 lakh litres of water to maintain the respective pitches.
HKings XI Punjab co-owner Ness Wadia, who was among the first to advocate shifting of matches, had welcomed the Court order, saying that he was glad that sensitivities of the drought-affected people in Maharashtra were being respected.
BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur had said that there was an attempt to create negativity around the league.
"We are not using drinking water, we have said that we'll use treated sewage water only. How many swimming pools of 5 star hotels have been shut? Have people stopped watering their lawns?" Thakur had asked.
"There is an attempt to create negativity on every issue these days. IPL was to use 0.00038 per cent of water so that shows the requirement was not much."
The sentiment had found support former captains Rahul Dravid and Sunil Gavaskar as well, both of whom felt that IPL and cricket had become soft targets to generate controversies.
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