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Sunil Gavaskar says IPL 2026 final should have been delayed a day to be fair to Gujarat Titans, citing their hectic playoff travel and lack of rest between matches.
News18
Former India cricketer Sunil Gavaskar believes that the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 final should have been postponed by a day to be a ‘little fair’ to the Gujarat Titans. He said that the franchise was short-handed because they had to travel between three venues in the playoffs due to no fault of their own.
Usually, the four IPL playoffs have been conducted only across two venues, with one ground getting the first Qualifier and the Eliminator, and the other having the second Qualifier and the Final. This means that the team that loses the first Qualifier can go straight to the other, where a win would not mean further travel.
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The BCCI didn’t give a reason for why it wasn’t the case this year. The first Qualifier was held in Dharamsala, and after a loss to RCB, the Titans traveled to New Chandigarh for the second Qualifier, where a win forced them to go to Ahmedabad. There was less than 48 hours between the two matches, and most of the time would have gone into traveling and finding a bit of rest.
“Yes, definitely,” Gavaskar told India Today. “Make no mistake, players require rest. You didn’t know when your flight was taking off, so there was anxiousness. Which means you are mentally also off apart from the physical toll. So, I thought with a reserve day in place, considering what happened was completely unexpected, I thought they could have pushed the final to tomorrow, just to be a little fair to the Gujarat Titans team,” he said.
GT were further hit by travel delays. The team was scheduled to fly out of Chandigarh on a charter flight on Saturday afternoon but heavy rainfall across north-western India, in Punjab and Rajasthan, prevented airport authorities from granting take-off clearance in Chandigarh. The team reached their hotel in Gandhinagar late at night, getting only a few hours to prepare for the biggest match of the season.
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