Premier Badminton League 2020: Hyderabad to host PBL finals as Bengaluru Raptors fail to get venue

Bengaluru, Jan 10: The last leg of Premier Badminton League (PBL) Season 5, which was scheduled from February 5-9, has been shifted from Bengaluru to Hyderabad due to unavailability of the stadium.

The organisers made the announcement and shared the revised schedule on Friday (January 11). The fifth season of the PBL is commencing from January 20.

Hyderabad was supposed to host the matches from January 29 to February 4 as per the original schedule. Now 15 matches including three double-headers will be hosted by Hyderabad as per the updated schedule which will start from January 29.

The semi-finals and finals will also be hosted in Hyderabad. The other two venues for the season 5 are Chennai (January 20-24) and Lucknow (Jan 25-28).

Earlier on Thursday (January 9), Bengaluru Raptors expressed their inability to host the final and semifinals of the upcoming league due to "unavailability" of venue.

In a series of tweets, Bengaluru Raptors made it clear that due to the unavailability of the Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium, they might not be able to host the scheduled matches.

"Dear badminton players and Bengaluru Raptors fans, unfortunately, it looks like this year we may not be able to have the Premier Badminton League finals in Namma Bengaluru. We have been requesting the availability of Kanteerava stadium for several months now," the franchise wrote on their twitter handle.

They blamed it on some officials at the Kanteerava, who, the franchisee alleged, were "doing their very best to sabotage this event from happening".

The upcoming edition of the PBL is scheduled to start on January 20 when reigning world champion PV Sindhu's team Hyderabad Hunters faces Chennai Superstarz in Chennai. A total of 24 ties will be played in 21 days in three different cities.