Professional sport will resume in the UK on Monday with a horse racing meeting at Newcastle and Championship League snooker in Milton Keynes.
It comes after the Government gave the green light for sport to return behind closed doors as part of its partial lifting of lockdown.
The Premier League will return on June 17 as Manchester City face Arsenal and Aston Villa take on Sheffield United, with each of the 92 remaining games to be broadcast live on television, around a third of those free-to-air.
Plans are being put in place for England to take on the West Indies and Pakistan at cricket, while golf, tennis, both codes of rugby, F1, motorcycling, athletics, cycling, boxing and darts also have are all gearing towards a restart.
Here's a sport-by-sport breakdown...
ATHLETICS
The track and field season has been decimated, with the Olympics postponed and the European Athletics Championships and London Anniversary Games cancelled. A revised calendar of one-day meetings is tentatively planned between August and October, including the Gateshead Diamond League (Aug 16) the week after the British Championships in Manchester (Aug 8-9). Elite athletes have returned to one-to-one training with coaches, maintaining social distancing.
BOXING
Although elite sport has government clearance to return to basic training, sparring has yet to be permitted by the British Boxing Board of Control and the 2020 boxing calendar contains only hope. Promoter Eddie Hearn is planning to stage five-bout fight nights in his 15-acre Essex garden, starting as early as July 15 and culminating in a “massive tear-up” between Dillian Whyte vs Alexander Povetkin. The Matchroom boss is also looking at getting Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev to face off in front of a small London crowd in October or November.
CRICKET
Domestic cricket will not start until August 1 at the earliest. England, though, are set to begin a three-Test series against West Indies on 8 July. The Tests are scheduled to be played behind closed doors in a bio-secure environment at Hampshire’s Ageas Bowl and Lancashire’s Old Trafford. But the series still has to be approved by the government – and the West Indies squad would have to quarantine for 14 days. Options for playing first-class and limited-overs competitions later will be presented to the ECB this month.
CYCLING
The Tour de France is expected to go ahead on its rescheduled dates of August 29-September 20, with the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta e Espana overlapping in October to complete a crowded period of three Grand Tours in just 72 days. Major races on world governing body UCI’s schedule are due to begin from August 1.
DARTS
Thanks to the PDC Home Tour, streamed online from players’ living rooms, live competition has been going on for six weeks already. But next month’s World Matchplay in Blackpool is in doubt and the incomplete Premier League has been rescheduled to finish in Newcastle on October 1.
FOOTBALL
The first two Premier League matches are pencilled in for June 17 and the Championship is expected to restart on June 20 if rubber-stamped in a meeting a week today. League One’s future will be decided at the same meeting. League Two voted on May 15 to curtail the season and the four play-off teams are preparing and getting tested ready for final vote confirming format. The FA Cup final is slated for August 1 – with the quarter-finals on June 27-28 and semis on July 11-12 – with European competition resuming after that building to a Champions League final in Istanbul on August 29.
F1
The Formula One season is scheduled to get underway with back-to-back races in Austria, the first on July 5. But chief executive Chase Carey warned there’s “significant potential” for further cancellations. The hope is to squeeze 15 to 18 races into the truncated season, ending with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi in December. Fans will initially be banned and will be absent from Silverstone if the circuit gets the go-ahead to hold races in August.
GOLF
After a number of local exhibition events, the PGA Tour is due to start on June 11 in Fort Worth, Texas, without fans, while the British Masters will kick-off the European version on July 22, the start of a six-event run in this country culminating in the UK Championship at the Belfry. However, senior players such as Rory McIlroy have spoken out about postponing September’s Ryder Cup until it can be played with spectators on the course.
MOTORCYCLING
The Jerez circuit will take centre stage as Moto GP and World Superbikes return. MotoGP, which saw its British GP become the fifth race in the calendar to be cancelled last week, are hoping to re-start on July 19 behind closed doors, which will give Spaniard Marc Marquez a chance to increase his lead in front of his home crowd. Then, between July 31- Aug 2, World Superbikes Championship, with Britain’s Alex Lowes top, plans to get back underway in Jerez before moving to the Algarve circuit a week later.
TENNIS
Jamie Murray has organised the behind-closed-doors Schroders Battle of the Brits event from June 23-28 at Roehampton, with brother Andy confirmed along with Kyle Edmund and Dan Evans. The event will be shown on Amazon Prime and marks the start of a number of weeks of LTA events designed to kickstart British tennis. Internationally, the ATP still has an unlikely July 13 return date but without crowds, there are already doubts over the Australian Open in January.
RUGBY LEAGUE
Super League clubs are working on three models to return, all starting in early August with different finish dates in November, December and January. That will initially be behind closed doors but they hope crowds could be back in October. The Championship and League One have created working groups to decide if playing again in 2020 is financially feasible. Australia’s NRL returned at the weekend in a remodelled season that finishes with State of Origin in November.
RUGBY UNION
England’s Premiership clubs will find out on Thursday when they can play again, but it is unlikely to be before the end of July. The plan is for them to return to Phase 1 training this week, working out in small, socially-distanced clusters. Financially stricken clubs, who will need at least six weeks to prepare for the resumption of a league which has nine rounds still to complete plus top-four play-offs, have been helped out by government decreeing players can remain on furlough up until they start playing again. The Pro14 has pencilled in an August 22 restart date. Test-playing nations and European Cup chiefs hope to stage fixtures in September but that smacks, increasingly, of wishful thinking.
