IPL 2021: Player replacements, Squads, Fixtures, Timings, Broadcasters, Live Streaming and all you need to know

The remainder of the Indian Premier League’s 14th edition is set to be played in the United Arab Emirates from September 19. The 2021 edition of the league was played in a cluster-caravan format in India during April and May, with the teams travelling to different cities upon the completion of one leg.

While things went smooth until Match No. 29, the invisible virus crept in and threw everything in tatters as the teams shifted their bases to Ahmedabad and Delhi for the second leg after the completion of the Mumbai and Chennai leg.

The first to fall prey to the virus were Kolkata Knight Riders players Varun Chakravarthy and Sandeep Warrier, which meant that their encounter on 3rd May against Royal Challengers Bangalore was postponed. The chances of IPL going forward took a massive dent after four support staff members tested positive the same day before CSK communicated to the BCCI that they will not be able to take the field unless all the players, who came in contact with the positive staff members test negative.

Before the BCCI could have tackled those issues, Delhi Capital spinner Amit Mishra and Sunrisers Hyderabad wicketkeeper returned a positive test result, too, landing a death punch on even the slightest of possibilities of the tournament going forward. Resultantly, the BCCI and the IPL Governing Council, in a unanimous decision, postponed the tournament indefinitely. After 25 days of contemplation and endless speculations, the board finally zeroed in on UAE as the destination to host the 31 unfinished fixtures, including the playoffs.

The bumpy IPL resumption ride

There were hurdles aplenty for the BCCI, who requested Cricket West Indies to prepone CPL 2021, which was originally scheduled from August 28 to September 19. Honouring the request, CWI rescheduled the tournament from August 25 to September 15 to avoid clash and ensure smooth bubble-to-bubble transfer of West Indies’ IPL-bounds players.

Another major hurdle in the BCCI’s way was eliminated when England’s Bangladesh tour was pushed back to 2023, paving way for all of England’s IPL players to participate freely. The tournament’s second leg stands at clash only with New Zealand’s Pakistan tour, however, with NZC having green signaled its players to cater their IPL duties, the foreign player availability problem for the IPL stands solved.

As it now stands, the tournament will be played across three venues – Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah – in the emirates, with the league phase supposed to run until October 8 followed by first qualifier on October 10, Eliminator on October 11, second qualifier on October 13 and the final on October 15, only two days before the scheduled start of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

IPL 2021 UAE leg’s Covid-19 and bio-bubble guide

• In accordance with BCCI’s Covid-19 protocols, every person – whether player, support staff, commentator, umpire, broadcast crew or member of players’ families – need to undergo an RT-PCR test three days before their UAE departure.
• Those taking a bubble-to-bubble transfer (from CPL 2021, England-India Test series or Sri Lanka-South Africa white-ball series) need not undergo mandatory quarantine, provided they don’t step out of the bio-secure environment in the period between leaving their current bubble and joining the IPL bubble.
• All others would be required to quarantine for six days upon arrival and return three negative rounds of RT-PCR tests on even days before being let inside the bubble.
• Inside the bubble, each individual will be tested twice every week for the initial two weeks, followed by every fifth day until the tournament end.
• Should an individual test positive inside the bubble, s/he will have to practice self-isolation for a minimum of 10 days and return no less than two RT-PCR tests conducted with a 24-hour gap before being allowed to re-enter the bubble. 

IPL 2021 Player replacements

Despite all of BCCI’s hurdles being cleared gradually, a host of players have opted out of the second leg due to a variety of reasons, forcing the IPL teams to rope in their replacements.

IPL 2021 UAE leg Squads

Delhi Capitals 

Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant (c), Shimron Hetmyer, Marcus Stoinis, Chris Woakes, Ravi Ashwin, Axar Patel, Amit Mishra, Lalit Yadav, Pravin Dubey, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Ishant Sharma, Avesh Khan, Steve Smith, Umesh Yadav, Ripal Patel, Vishnu Vinod, Lukman Meriwala, M Siddarth, Tom Curran, Sam Billings

Chennai Super Kings

Mahendra Singh Dhoni (c), Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, KM Asif, Deepak Chahar, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis, Imran Tahir, N Jagadeesan, Karn Sharma, Lungi Ngidi, Mitchell Santner, Ravindra Jadeja, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shardul Thakur, Sam Curran, R Sai Kishore, Moeen Ali, K Gowtham, Cheteshwar Pujara, Harishankar Reddy, Bhagath Varma, C Hari Nishanth

Mumbai Indians

Rohit Sharma (c), Adam Milne, Aditya Tare, Anmolpreet Singh, Anukul Roy, Arjun Tendulkar, Chris Lynn, Dhawal Kulkarni, Hardik Pandya, Ishan Kishan, James Neesham, Jasprit Bumrah, Jayant Yadav, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Marco Jansen, Mohsin Khan, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Piyush Chawla, Quinton De Kock, Rahul Chahar, Saurabh Tiwary, Suryakumar Yadav, Trent Boult, Yudhvir Singh.

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Virat Kohli (c), AB de Villiers, Devdutt Padikkal, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Siraj, George Garton, Akash Deep, Pavan Deshpande, Tim David, Shahbaz Ahamad, Navdeep Saini, Wanindu Hasaranga, Kyle Jamieson, Glenn Maxwell, Rajat Patidar, Sachin Baby, Mohammed Azharuddeen, Daniel Christian, KS Bharat, Suyash Prabhudessai, Dushmantha Chameera, Harshal Patel

Rajasthan Royals 

Sanju Samson (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Manan Vohra, Anuj Rawat, Riyan Parag, David Miller, Rahul Tewatia, Mahipal Lomror, Shreyas Gopal, Mayank Markande, Glenn Phillips, Tabraiz Shamsi, Jaydev Unadkat, Kartik Tyagi, Shivam Dube, Chris Morris, Mustafizur Rahman, Chetan Sakariya, KC Cariappa, Liam Livingstone, Kuldip Yadav, Akash Singh, Oshane Thomas, Evin Lewis

Kolkata Knight Riders

Eoin Morgan (c), Dinesh Karthik, Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, Tim Seifert, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Kuldeep Yadav, Shivam Mavi, Lockie Ferguson, Tim Southee, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Sandeep Warrier, Prasidh Krishna, Rahul Tripathi, Varun Chakravarthy, Shakib Al Hasan, Sheldon Jackson, Vaibhav Arora, Harbhajan Singh, Karun Nair, Ben Cutting, Venkatesh Iyer, Pawan Negi

Punjab Kings 

KL Rahul (c), Mayank Agarwal, Chris Gayle, Mandeep Singh, Prabsimran Singh, Nicholas Pooran, Sarfaraz Khan, Deepak Hooda, Murugan Ashwin, Ravi Bishnoi, Harpreet Brar, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Ishan Porel, Darshan Nalkande, Chris Jordan, Dawid Malan, Adil Rashid, Shahrukh Khan, Nathan Ellis, Moises Henriques, Jalaj Saxena, Utkarsh Singh, Fabian Allen, Saurabh Kumar

Sunrisers Hyderabad

David Warner, Kane Williamson (c), Virat Singh, Manish Pandey, Priyam Garg, Wriddhiman Saha, Jonny Bairstow, Jason Roy, Sreevats Goswami, Vijay Shankar, Mohammad Nabi, Kedar Jadhav, J Suchit, Jason Holder, Abhishek Sharma, Abdul Samad, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rashid Khan, T Natarajan, Sandeep Sharma, Khaleel Ahmed, Siddharth Kaul, Basil Thampi, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mujeeb ur Rahman

IPL 2021 schedule of remaining matches