This year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 competition is set to be postponed indefinitely amid the COVID-19 pandemic after the country extended a lockdown on its 1.3 billion people until at least May 3 on Tuesday.

The eight-team league, which was originally scheduled to begin on March 29, was initially deferred until Wednesday before India announced a three-week lockdown last month.

BCCI president Sourav Ganguly had earlier acknowledged the difficulty in hosting the tournament amid lockdown and the travel restrictions forced by the global health crisis.

“At the present moment, we can’t say anything, where will you get players from, where do players travel. It’s just simple common sense that at the moment, nothing is in favour of any kind of sport anywhere in the world, forget IPL.” the former India captain told one of the leading dailies at the weekend.