IPL 2020: 7 franchises to take £100,000 air bubble route to bring players from Manchester to Dubai

Seven franchises of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 have collectively hired a charter to bring 22 players from Manchester to Dubai which will cost them around one hundred thousand pounds and more. 

England and Australian players, who are currently involved in the ongoing limited-overs series, will aboard a charter flight in Manchester after the last ODI of the England-Australia white-ball series, on September 17 and will be with their respective teams well ahead of the IPL 2020 openers, according to a report in Mumbai Mirror.

The likes of Steve Smith, David Warner, Aaron Finch, Pat Cummins, Jos Butter, Eoin Morgan, Jofra Archer among others will be heading to the UAE in a charter flight after the franchises decided to shell out a lump sum money together in a bid to get the six-day quarantine exempted. The only team that has not participated are Mumbai Indians.

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The idea of bringing in a charter flight into the play is to transport all the players from the England bubble to IPL’s bio environment. Kolkata Knight Riders, based in Abu Dhabi, will need their players to undergo six-day isolation due to the strict protocols in the emirates. However, all three KKR players – Cummins, Banton and Morgan – will be eligible to play on September 23 – their seventh day in Abu Dhabi – after clearing all three COVID-19 tests. 

IPL-bound English and Aussie players will travel to the airport in a sanitized bus and will land at a different airport, not at the regular Dubai International Airport. 

“It has all been taken care of. The idea is that they are not outside of the bubble. If we had flown them by commercial flights, they would have had to undergo quarantine. And costwise also it would have been dearer as each player will have to be flown by business class. Close to Rs 1 crore for 22 players is not much I suppose,” a franchise official said.