Australia Women captain Meg Lanning was hopeful that the forthcoming 2021 Women's ODI World Cup would go ahead as per the original schedule next February in New Zealand amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which led to the postponement of the Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 recently.
However, the future of the Women’s 50-over global event remained less clear with the ICC stating it would "continue to evaluate the situation" while New Zealand Cricket chairman Greg Barclay revealed that a decision on the Women's World Cup 2021 is expected to arrive in next couple of days.
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Well, Lanning who earlier this year won T20 World Cup 2020 for Australia in March, has welcomed news of the early decision on the Women’s ODI World Cup future. However, she is concerned about the preparation for the mega event, as she stressed the need to all have the opportunity to prepare adequately for the prestigious multi-nation tournament to be held in New Zealand.
Lanning told reporters: “You want to know one way or another whether it’s going ahead, and fingers crossed things continue to improve around the world and the tournament can go ahead.”
She further explained, “In an ideal world you’d like to get (certainty) … but I understand there’s a lot of complexities involved in the situation from week to week and who knows what the situation’s going to be in a few months’ time, so it would be a very difficult job for the organizers to work out what the best plan of attack is. But as players, we’re just preparing for it to go ahead and we’ll just wait for the decision to be made ... and make sure we’re ready to go if that’s the case.
It's something the ICC will have to weigh up in whether the tournament goes ahead. Will every team in the competition have the opportunity to prepare adequately for a World Cup? There are still a few teams that have to go through the qualifying process so I'm not sure how that will pan out.”
Lanning signed off by saying, “There are a few more decisions to be made around it rather than whether it can just go ahead or not. It's a pretty difficult position to be in, but as a player you want things to be as equal and fair as they can be heading into a big world tournament and I'm sure the organizers will make sure that happens.”
(With ESPN Cricinfo Inputs)
