The International Cricket Council (ICC) has postponed the 2021 Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand by a year, while this year’s planned men’s T20 World Cup in Australia will now be held in 2022.
The ICC confirmed last month that Australia’s Men’s T20 World Cup had been postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The event had originally been due to take place from October 18 to November 15.
India will host the Men’s T20 World Cup in 2021 as planned, with Australia to now stage the event two years later than originally scheduled.
New Zealand’s Women’s Cricket World Cup had been due to take place from February 6 to March 7 next year, but the event will now be held in 2022 instead. The ICC cited the global impact of the pandemic as the reason for the rescheduling.
The rescheduled Women’s Cricket World Cup means that New Zealand will stage three women’s World Cup events in consecutive years. The country is also scheduled to co-host the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup alongside Australia, while it will stage the Women’s Rugby World Cup next year.
The IBC, the ICC’s commercial subsidiary, took the decisions to reschedule the two events following an extensive contingency planning exercise which considers the health, cricket and commercial impact of COVID-19 globally.
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 have 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.”
The format of the Men’s T20 World Cup in 2021 will remain as it was for 2020, with all teams that qualified for that event now set to participate in India in 2021. A new qualification process will run for the 2022 event in Australia.
The format of the postponed Women’s Cricket World Cup will also remain as it was for 2021. Five teams have already qualified for the event and that will stand for 2022, while a Sri Lanka-based qualification event to determine the final three teams will now be held in 2021 after it was postponed last month.
Venues in Christchurch, Auckland, Mount Maunganui, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin will be used during New Zealand’s Women’s Cricket World Cup.
Image: TimBray/Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)/Edited for size
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