INDIA, AUSTRALIA TO OPEN CRICKET COMPETITION IN CWG

Dubai, Feb. 1: Cricket will mark its return to the Commonwealth Games after a gap of 24 years with India taking on Australia on July 29 in the 2022 Birmingham edition.

The league-cum-knockout women’s tournament kicks off with a match between women’s 2020 T20 World Cup finalists Australia and India on July 29, with the bronze and gold medal matches scheduled for August 7.

Cricket is the first discipline to announce its complete line-up for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games after Sri Lanka was confirmed as the eighth team in the women’s T20 tournament, the ICC said on Tuesday. The announcement was made jointly by the ICC and the Commonwealth Games Federation following Sri Lanka’s victory in the Commonwealth Games Qualifier in Kuala Lumpur last week and the subsequent CGF ratification of the island nation’s entry.

Australia, Barbados, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan have already qualified as women’s cricket makes its first entry into the Commonwealth Games.