Reports: ICC Champions Trophy 2021 and World Cup 2023 could move out of India

What's the story?

In what could be a big blow to BCCI and to fans all over the country, the ICC Champions Trophy, 2021 and ICC World Cup, 2023, both, which are planned to be held in India, could be moved out of the country.

The reason for this being that the ICC is supposed to get a tax waiver of $100 million from the Indian government, which they have still not received.

"The BCCI is a party to tax exemption decisions and hence it's bound by it. The BCCI did not get the exemption for the ICC Twenty20 World Cup held in India. BCCI and ICC officials have shown documents from countries that gave tax exemption for ICC events to Arun Jaitley (Union Finance Minister). The ICC members believe that they should not lose money,'' a source close to the BCCI told Sportstar.

In case you didn't know...

It is a prerogative of the host nation to allow full tax exemption for a major event such as the Champions Trophy or the World Cup.

The UPA government had given a tax exemption for the Champions Trophy held in 2006 and the World Cup held in 2011. However, they did not allow a tax exemption for the ICC World T20 in 2016.

The details:

If the government does not provide the waiver for the tax exemption, India might lose its chance to host the two prestigious tournaments.

The ICC suggested that they would look at hosting the tournaments in a country which has a similar time zone, i.e Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

What's next?

The ball is now in the court of the Indian government as they will have to soon make a decision whether to provide the tax exemption or not.

Author's take:

If it has been done in the past and if all the other countries have been doing so is well, there is no reason as to why the Indian government should not provide the tax exemption.

It would be a big loss to the BCCI and the fans across the country if the tournaments are moved out of India.