India to host 2021 T20 World Cup, 2022 edition in Australia
MUMBAI : India will stage next year’s T20 World Cup as originally scheduled with the Australian edition, put off this year due to Covid-19, to be held in 2022.
The decision was made at Friday’s International Cricket Council (ICC) board meeting. Both events will be staged in Oct-nov, as ICC had announced earlier.
“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,” ICC said in a statement. That confirms Associate teams that qualified for this year’s event like Papua New Guinea, Oman, Namibia, Netherlands
and Scotland will play in India.
Staging the 2021 edition will be seen as victory for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Cricket Australia had written to ICC pushing for the 2021 window, asking for India to host the 2022 tournament.
BCCI was not willing as it would get too close to the 2023 ODI World Cup it is due to host. What also proved decisive was that the World Cups in India are worth a lot more commercially.
The decision was made by IBC, the commercial arm of ICC.
“They took into account the economic challenge of forcing the broadcaster to pull off two back-to-back World Cups in India,” a BCCI source said.
With the postponed T20 World Cup finding a window in the current rights cycle (2015-23), no member board’s ICC revenue will be hit.
The women’s ODI World Cup scheduled for Feb-mar 2021 in New Zealand has been moved to 2022.
With no women’s internationals played since the T20 World Cup in Australia early this year, “moving the event by 12 months gives competing teams the chance to play a sufficient level of cricket ahead of both the qualification event and leading into a World Cup,” ICC CEO Manu Sawhney said.
ENGLAND TOUR OFF
England’s limited-overs tour of India in Sept-oct, has been put off till early next year with the T20 World Cup called off and the Covid-19 situation still grim, both boards said on Friday.