BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai Sports Bureau chief Xu Bin said on Monday that the Chinese Super League (CSL) could kick off in July provided everything goes on as planned.

File photo by CFP

The 2020 CSL campaign, slated to begin on February 22, was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, its restart has been the subject of speculation with the virus gradually getting under control.

"The Chinese Basketball Association has announced that its league will start on June 20, and if everything goes well, the CSL will resume in July," Xu told a Shanghai local radio station.

He said that CSL will introduce a new format this season, according to which, the teams will gather at two cities to play a tournament.

Both the basketball league and the CSL matches will be held in two stages -- a round-robin and knock-out stage.

All CSL teams have recently been playing friendlies to prepare the restart of the season.

Beijing Guoan has canceled several upcoming friendly matches after new cases of COVID-19 were discovered in China's capital on June 11.

The canceled matches include ties against fellow CSL sides Hebei China Fortune and Shandong Luneng.