Sports minister Kiren Rijiju on Saturday said India will not host any international event in the immediate future and fans will have to learn to live with the new normal of sporting activities happening behind closed doors in a Covid-19 world.

Rijiju’s statement gains greater significance in the context of the suspended IPL, which the BCCI wants to host in October-November in case the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia is postponed.

“We have been working for quite some time now to resume sporting activities but before that we have to think about practice and training. We are not going to have a tournament kind of situation immediately,” Rijiju was quoted as saying by India Today.

“We have to learn to live with the situation where sporting events will have to be carried forward without spectators in stadiums and sports venues,” he added.

Talking specifically about IPL XIII, which has been put off indefinitely, Rijiju said it is the government’s prerogative to take a call on conducting any tournament in the country.

Rijiju’s statement comes close on the heels of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) laying out a detailed Standard Operating Procedure for resumption of sporting activities across the country in phases.

“In the background their (athletes’) fitness and everything has been tracked.

They are in touch with the coaches, the fitness experts, the high performance directors. We are monitoring every athlete who are of higher stature, who have played for India and higher clubs,” he said.

“SAI has prepared a detailed SOP. This SOP has already been issued to all sports federations and other sports bodies, including government stakeholders. Based on this, training will start,” Rijiju said.

The minister, however, reiterated that resumption of sporting activities would entirely depend on guidelines of respective states and local administrations.