Coronavirus forces BCCI to empty out HQ; staff to work from home

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced India's biggest sports body BCCI to virtually shut down its headquarter in Mumbai from Tuesday with its employees being advised to work from home.

It has been learnt that the employees have been asked to "work from home" with all the cricketing operations already being suspended till further notice.

"The BCCI employees were today notified that the headquarters at the Wankhede Stadium will be as good as closed in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. All the staffers have been advised to work from home," a top source from the Board told PTI on the condition of anonymity.

"However, if someone still wants to come, they can," he added.

The BCCI last Friday postponed the IPL-13 from March 29 to April 15 along with all other domestic tournaments, including the Irani Cup and the Women's Challenger Trophy.

India has so far reported 114 positive cases with two deaths. The global death toll has crossed 6,000 and the number of infected is over 160,000.

In India as well as across the globe, more and more companies are encouraging their employees to work from home in these critical times and no wonder, the BCCI is also going the same way.

It has been learnt that the National Cricket Academy (NCA) has also stopped its various zonal camps even though rehabilitation programmes at the Bengaluru centre was still on as on Monday.

The IPL franchises have also called off their pre-tournament training camps with Royal Challengers Bangalore being the latest.

"Keeping in mind the health and safety of everyone involved, the RCB Training Camp scheduled to start on the 21st of March has been deferred until further notice. We request everyone to follow the guidelines provided by the Health Ministry and stay safe," RCB tweeted.

The RCB outfit is led by Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli.

The IPL franchisees were engaged in a conference call, exploring the possible options among themselves after their meeting with the BCCI brass in Mumbai on Saturday.

With the IPL already losing out on 17 days, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has hinted that one of the options could be a "truncated IPL", but only if the situation improves by April 15.

In case of a truncated IPL, eight teams could be divided into two groups with the top four going into the knockouts.