Sue

The banzuke was published back in May, and there won't be a new one. Degeiko isn't happening, and the sumo world is mostly sequestered. There just isn't all that much to talk about yet.

I actually rather enjoyed the quiet in Osaka. It gave the proceedings a solemn feeling, appropriate to a religious ceremony. It wouldn't work for other sports, but it was just fine for Sumo.

Canada has even bigger and sparser distant areas, and that hasn't stopped Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver from being major hot spots.

When will be the next basho to get through all 15 days? As of April 28, Natsu is still on, but at least six cases of COVID-19 have been reported among Ozumo people.

The banzuke for Natsu is scheduled to be released on Monday. Will it still be released then, or will it wait until two weeks before the revised date? (And possibly not happen if there's a cancellation.)

Going forward with the basho would be unprecedented, given that the rest of the sports world is completely shut down. I don't doubt that either the national or the Tokyo authorities would shut it down if the NSK attempted to proceed with it, and it defies credulity to think that they'd make it through the full two weeks without having to shut down from a rikishi testing positive. They got lucky in Osaka. It won't happen twice.

The AFL has been suspended since the end of round 1.

We may need to invent a new term if Natsu winds up not happening, and Ozumo joins the rest of the sports world in pausing for the duration.

I'd be surprised if there weren't at least some cancelled bashos in store for the near future, which would extend Hakuho's career chronologically without causing more wear and tear on his body. Nothing obviously has been announced, but getting Natsu to happen is going to be extremely difficult, and we may be in for a lengthy pause. Hakuho has said that he planned to retire in 2020, which gives us up to four more bashos with him. I'd be astonished if four bashos actually take place before a hypothetical mid-2021 Olympics.

It's not quite cold turkey -- there's a bit of dust-settling for a day or two after Senshuraku, with final updates getting posted, the YDC deliberating, new Juryo announcements, and so forth. A week or so after, things get really dead, though. I have banzuke day marked in my calendar, and look ahead to that.

So, does this mean that the audience is now kadoban? I hope they turn up for at least eight days whenever the next basho is held....

10- "I'm not thinking of the yusho." <--- I am thinking of little else. There. Fixed it.

In the NBA case, there really was a good reason to test them early: players, officials, and team staff were potential disease vectors from city to city, potentially exposing whole arenas full of spectators at a time, and propagating the disease to all the other arenas throughout the league. And a positive test from the NBA got everyone to take the threat seriously, and got large spectator events shut down. In the NSK case, Chiyomaru wasn't tested until he met the same criteria as a member of the general public would have needed.

That makes me suspect that there are a lot more cases than have been detected or reported.

Shodai speculated to be next Ozeki. Film at 11.