Former England captain Nasser Hussain has credited the Indian Premier League for helping players around the world grow and said that the league acts as a “finishing school” for the cricketers.

“IPL isn’t a learning school, it’s a finishing school. It finishes you off as a cricketer, those bits that are missing, like playing spin on drier pitches, it helps you learn that and finishes you off as a cricketer.” Nasser Hussain told Harsha Bhogle on CricBuzz.

Speaking about the money factor of the tournament, which critics feel makes a cricketer selfish as he tends to sacrifice his national duty by choosing IPL over that, Hussain said that it changed the lives of poor cricketers who earlier could not dream about earning such huge sum of money.

“Obviously money is important. Some of these figures are life-changing figures. West Indies love the IPL because it gives them sums of money that they can never dream of.

“But you cannot argue that when you go and play in the IPL, you’re playing against the best players. You look at all those team sheets, they are like a World XI. Because they are playing in that big crowd, it helps you handle pressure,” Hussain added.

Meanwhile, the IPL 2020, which was scheduled to be played from March 29 was earlier postponed to April 15 before it was suspended due to the crisis caused by the novel coronavirus till further notice.

However, there have been various media reports suggesting BCCI is mulling alternative windows like August-September and October-November to stage the 2020’s edition of the cash-rich tournament. But all of the speculations lacked an official backing as the fate of IPL continues to hang in doubt.

But, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) treasurer Arun Dhumal on Friday had said that there was no plan made by the board about the rescheduling of the tournament.

“We haven’t planned anything as of now. We can’t think of IPL getting back yet. Players coming in from other countries, whether they’ll be willing to come here and be quarantined for two weeks and play IPL is not known,” Dhumal said as quoted by Australian daily Sydney Herald.

“How can we think of IPL? This is all media speculation. There is nothing as of now. Once things get clear, then only will we be able to go back to the drawing board and think about re-starting cricket,” he added.