Dubai: Being put up at one place throughout an entire Indian Premier League (IPL) season can be boring but it certainly is saving players from the exhaustion caused by travelling whenever the tournament is staged in India.
This is the first time since 2009 that an entire IPL season is being held outside India. Even in 2009, when the tournament was held in South Africa due to the general elections, it demanded air travel between different venues.
However, since the event is being held in the UAE this time and the only three venues being used — Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai — are in the vicinity of each other, travel between hotel and stadia has been by road.
Importantly, the teams have been stationed at one place and haven’t had to change hotels.
Royal Challengers Bangalore all-rounder Chris Morris said the experience this time has been ‘magnificent’ as they’ve been saved the trouble of frequent travel.
The toughest part of (previous editions of) Indian Premier League is travelling in India. IPL games are tough but the travelling is absolutely hectic. You finish the game late, come back at 12.30-1 am and pack everything up by 3-4 am, put the stuff outside your room. Then you have to leave the hotel (for the airport) in a couple of hours.
You take shower, dress well because you have to look good, respectable. Then you drive for one to one-and-a-half hours to the airport and fly for another one, one-and-a-half, two hours to a venue where you might be playing a match may be two days later, Morris told reporters from the UAE on Friday.
Morris called the experience of being stationed at one place ‘refreshing’.
Even when part of the IPL season (20 matches) was held in the UAE back in 2014 due to general elections, some of the players had said that less travelling had made it easier for them.