ICC has contingency plans for T20 World Cup in India but is 'going ahead as planned'

World body monitoring record surge in coronavirus cases in the country

India are set to host the T20 World Cup later this year. Reuters

The International Cricket Council revealed India remains the hosts for the Twenty20 World Cup later this year despite the country experiencing a record Covid-19 surge recently.

India reported a record 115,736 new cases on Wednesday, a 13-fold increase in just over two months, as its coronavirus infections swelled to 12.8 million, making it the third worst hit country after the United States and Brazil.

The country is scheduled to host the T20 World Cup in six months' time and Geoff Allardice, the acting chief executive of the world governing body, feels there is enough time before they need to hit the panic button.

"We are certainly proceeding on the assumption that the event is going ahead as planned," Allardice said on Wednesday.

"We do have backup plans that can be activated when the time is right. We're not anywhere near that timeline yet. We've got a number of months to be able to see how the situation is and how cricket events are being run."

The eight-team Indian Premier League will kick off on Friday without fans and the country's board BCCI has set up bio-secure bubbles for the participants.

"In terms of our plans, I think they're reasonably well advanced and we've seen a number of different approaches across the cricketing countries as to how to manage multi-team events," said Allardice.

"We're in a good state at the moment but acknowledge that the world is changing at a rapid rate at the moment."

Allardice said the ICC firmly backed players to get vaccinated whenever possible but does not have the remit to get involved with the distribution of the shots mandated by individual nations.