Now World T20 faces year delay

ENGLAND’S bid to unite the global game’s two white-ball belts is set to be put on hold with October’s Twenty20 World Cup looking likely to be postponed for 12 months.

Shifting the 16-team event in Australia a full year would have a knock-on effect of the 2021 Twenty20 World Cup in India being delayed to October-November 2022.

It does not represent an ideal schedule change, with Eoin Morgan’s team due to defend the 50-over world title on the subcontinent just three months later, in February 2023. It would also mean England heading straight out of the next global event and into the 2021-22 Ashes in November of next year.

However, there is a growing feeling within cricket’s international community that fulfilling a competition involving 15 different teams flying into Australia in five months’ time represents too much of a logistical nightmare. A switch to early 2021 has previously been mooted, but there is no obvious window for it as India’s lucrative five-match Test series with England is slated to start in late January.

Such tours — India’s visit to Australia for Tests at the back end of this year is understood to be worth £150million to Cricket Australia — are viewed as essential to get revenue streams flowing again.

Moving the T20 World Cup would also create a new October-November window for the Indian Premier League season to take place.

Organisers have suggested a definitive call need not be made until July and the ICC insist this potential switch ‘is all pure speculation’, but rescheduling will be high on the agenda during the ICC’s two-day chief executives’ teleconference on June 4-5.