To undergo six-day quarantine on landing in the UAE.
Mumbai Indians stars including skipper Rohit Sharma will be headed for Dubai on Saturday while Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings have also made individual travel arrangements after BCCI aborted their plans of getting Indian Premier League players out on a charter flight on September 15 following the cancellation of the fifth Test in Manchester.
For MI, the other players who would be leaving for Dubai with their respective families are Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav.
Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Shardul Thakur, Moeen Ali and Sam Curran are part of the CSK squad which has already started training for the IPL that is set to resume on September 19.
Captain K L Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Mohammad Shami and Dawid Malan are the Punjab players who are in Manchester.
"The BCCI isn't arranging any charter flights since the Test match has been cancelled. So every franchise is making their own travel arrangement. Since they are all flying commercial, they will be doing six-days of room quarantine," a senior IPL official said.
Before COVID struck the Indian team, the plan was a bubble-to-bubble transfer with players of both India and England taking a chartered flight to the UAE.
"Charter flight is not a possibility anymore. We are trying to get their tickets done for a commercial flight tomorrow. When they land, they will do six-day quarantine like the rest of the players," CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan told PTI.
Punjab Kings CEO Satish Menon said: "In all likelihood, our players will fly out from Manchester tomorrow."
Indian players have been in their rooms in Manchester since junior physio Yogesh Parmar tested positive on Thursday.
Viswanathan had earlier told ANI that the franchise is looking to get the Indian players who are part of the Indian team to Dubai by Saturday.
"Now that the Test match is off, we are looking to get the CSK boys into Dubai tomorrow," he said.
The 14th season of the IPL, which was postponed in May this year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, will resume on September 19 in Dubai with a blockbuster clash between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians.
The action will then shift to Abu Dhabi where Kolkata Knight Riders will square off against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Sharjah will host its first game on September 24 when Royal Challengers Bangalore take on Chennai Super Kings. In all, 13 matches will be held in Dubai, 10 in Sharjah, and 8 in Abu Dhabi.
The BCCI has decided to do away with contact tracing devices for the UAE leg, starting on September 19. The Indian board decided that Bubble Integrity Officers will do the necessary contact tracing if any player tests positive for COVID-19 in UAE. The Board has come up with a 46-page health advisory that lays down all the pointers that everyone associated with the IPL needs to follow in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the league.
