The International Cricket Council (ICC) has decided that India will host the T20 World Cup in 2021 while Australia, which was to host the event this year in October-November, will now host the 2022 edition. India will also host the 50-over World Cup in 2023.
The ICC confirmed that the Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 that was postponed due to Covid-19 will be held in Australia in 2022. India will host the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 as planned. In other developments, ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2021 in New Zealand has been postponed until FebruaryMarch 2022 because of the impact the pandemic has had on cricket globally.
The decisions were taken by the IBC (the commercial subsidiary of the ICC) following an extensive contingency planning exercise which has taken into account the health, cricket, and commercial impact of COVID-19 around the world.
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.”
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. We have decided to move the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup to give players from every competing nation, the best opportunity to be ready for the world’s biggest stage and there is still a global qualifier to complete to decide the final three teams.”
The format of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 will remain as it was for 2020 and all teams that qualified for the 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.