India will be retaining the rights to host the ICC T20 World Cup in 2021, with Australia getting to host the event in 2022, in lieu of their rights in 2020. The 2020 edition of the T20 tournament was postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Also, the Women’s ODI World Cup 2021 to be played in New Zealand was postponed to February-March 2022 due to the effects of COVID-19 across the world. These decisions were made by the ICC Business Corporation, the business development wing of the ICC, which met virtually on Friday, August 7, 2020.
The 2021 T20 World Cup will be hosted in India between October-November next year, with the final scheduled on November 14. Australia will then host the tournament in 2022 between October-November with the final scheduled for November 13.
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The format of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 will remain as it was for 2020 and all teams that qualified for that event will now participate in India in 2021. A new qualification process will be run for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022.
The format of the postponed ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup will remain as it was for 2021. Five teams have already qualified for the event and that will stand for 2022.
The original global qualification event to determine the final three teams to contest the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup was scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in July 2020, but this was postponed due to COVID-19. The qualification event will now be held in 2021.
ICC Acting Chairman Imran Khwaja said: “Over the last few months as we have considered how we return to staging global events, our number one priority has been to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in ICC events. The decisions the Board has taken today are in the best interests of the sport, our partners, and importantly our fans. I’d like to thank our partners at the BCCI, Cricket Australia and Cricket New Zealand as well as the Australian and New Zealand governments for their continued support and commitment to a safe return to ICC events.”
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ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: “We now have absolute clarity on the future of ICC events enabling all of our Members to focus on the rescheduling of lost international and domestic cricket. We will now proceed as planned with the Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 in India and host the 2022 edition in Australia.”
“There has been no women’s international cricket played since the conclusion of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup earlier this year and due to the varying impact of COVID-19 globally, that is likely to remain the situation for a number of the teams. Moving the event by 12 months gives all competing teams the chance to play a sufficient level of cricket ahead of both the qualification event and leading into a Cricket World Cup so the integrity of the tournament is maintained,” Sawhney said about Women’s ODI World Cup.
(ICC inputs)
