British Sports Minister hopeful for having crowds back for all sporting events in English summer
Britain’s Sports Minister Oliver Dowden has shown confidence that sporting events in his country can start welcoming fans and spectators in the stadium starting from June 21. However, he has also noted that some of the ‘high-risk’ venues require safety measures. The move will come in time for Wimbledon, which starts in June and will go till July.
But, most importantly, it keeps hopes of having crowds in stadiums during the long English summer of cricket. This season England will host the ICC World Test Championship Final between India and New Zealand and the two teams are set to play Test series against the hosts, on either of that summit clash.
Apart from this, England is also set to host Pakistan and Sri Lanka this summer. Pakistan will play a three-match ODI and T20I series, which starts in July. In June, Sri Lanka will play the same number of matches. India’s five-match Test series doesn’t start until early August. In other sporting events, the British Open golf tournament and the British Formula One Grand Prix will also be held in July.
We are on track at the moment: British Sports Minister Oliver Dowden
There has been ease on the COVID-19 restrictions in the roadmap presented by the government. This has allowed up to 10,000 fans at outdoor sports events in England from Monday. If there is another easing done, we might see these numbers get even higher in June. Dowden has revealed that there is a much higher possibility of reopening stadiums than it was when they first proposed the plans and everything in February.
“We are completely on track at the moment with the roadmap (and) the vaccination is rolling out as planned,” Dowden told the Department for Culture Media and Sport Select Committee. “I have a single-minded determination to get full reopening from June 21. With every passing day, I get more confident that we can achieve that. There will have to be in … the highest risk areas some kind of mitigations required … I cannot give the full assurance until we get to the stage of announcing stage four,” he added.
UEFA (The Union of European Football Associations) also said that Wembley will have a minimum of 25% capacity, which is around 22,500, for the first three group matches and a last-16 match at the European Championship, which is next month.
