The Sunday News
Mehluli Sibanda, Senior Sports Reporter
THE International Cricket Council board has resolved to expand the Men’s Cricket World Cup as well as the Men’s Twenty20 World Cup, with the Champions Trophy also being re-introduced.
On Tuesday, the ICC decision makers confirmed the schedule of events from 2024-2031 with both the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup and ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to be expanded and a Men’s Champions Trophy to be re-introduced.
For the Cricket World Cup, the tournament will return to 14 teams for the 2027 and 2031 editions. In 2019, the World Cup was reduced to 10 teams with the same number to participate in the 2023 edition in India.
“The ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup will become a 14 team, 54-match event in 2027 and 2031, whilst the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will be expanded to a 20 team, 55-match event in 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030. “An eight team Champions Trophy will be hosted in 2025 and 2029. ICC World Test Championship Finals will be hosted in 2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031. The ICC Women’s event schedule has already been confirmed with the expansion of both the Cricket World Cup and T20 World Cup forming part of the ICC’s long-term commitment to growing the women’s game,’’ said the ICC.
According to the world cricket governing body, the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup format will have two groups of seven, with the top three in each group progressing to a Super Six stage, followed by semi-finals and final. This is the same format that was used in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2003. The format of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will consist of four groups of five, with the top two from each group going through to a Super Eights stage, followed by the knockout stages of semi-finals and a final. The Champions Trophy will follow previous editions with two groups of four, semi-finals and final.
Also approved by the ICC board was the process for determining the hosts for all Men’s, Women’s and Under-19 events in the next cycle. The hosts for the Men’s events will be decided in September following a selection process that will get underway this month. The hosting process for Women’s and Under-19 events will commence in November and will be an opportunity to engage with a wider range of Members including first-time hosts.
A request from the ICC board has been made to the management to focus its planning efforts for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 on the event being staged in the United Arab Emirates with the possibility of including another venue in the Middle East. A final decision on the host country will be taken later this month. The board also confirmed that the BCCI Board of Control for Cricket in India will remain the hosts of the event regardless of where the event is played.
ICC Acting Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said: “Having the ICC event schedule confirmed through to 2031 is a significant step forward for cricket and will form the basis of our growth strategy for the next decade.
“The revised approach to selecting hosts for our events will give us much more flexibility to grow the game and engage new fans. There is a smaller pool of countries with the infrastructure needed to host our senior Men’s events which narrows the selection process. Additionally, many of our Members expressed interest in hosting Women’s and U19 events which gives us a great opportunity to stage events in established and emerging cricket nations.” – @Mdawini_29
