ICC T20 World Cup 2021: India retain hosting rights; Australia to host T20 World Cup 2022

ICC T20 World Cup 2021: India have retained the hosting rights of the next edition of the ICC T20 World Cup.

After the postponement of the ICC T20 World Cup 2020, ICC’s next step was always going to allot venues to the next two editions, i.e., 2021 and 2022.

In an important development, India, who were scheduled to host the 2021 edition, have retained the hosting rights. The decision was taken by the ICC Business Corporation which during a virtual meeting today.

It means that Australia will now host the ICC T20 World Cup in 2022, two years after they were originally scheduled to host the world event. Both the premier world tournaments will be played in the months of October-November.

A potential reason why India wasn’t awarded the 2022 edition can be that they are also scheduled to host the ODI World Cup in 2023. The current schedule of them hosting ICC events in 2021 and 2023 should work great for India to entice fans to the stadiums.

ICC T20 World Cup 2021

Slated to be played in Australia in October-November this year, the T20 World Cup faced a daunting challenge from the novel COVID-19 pandemic. The idea of organizing a 16-team world tournament amidst a global crisis was being spoken against for months before it eventually got delayed.

In addition to Cricket Australia Chairman Earl Eddings and Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Ehsan Mani, a Cricket Australia letter to ICC was also meant at delaying the world event by a year according to The Times of India.

After the now-postponed T20 World Cup 2020, the next ICC event was meant to be the ICC Women’s ODI World Cup 2022. Considering how the ongoing COVID-19 threat isn’t allowing cricket boards to finalize fixtures, the ICC has also decided to postpone the Women’s World Cup to 2022.

The Women’s ODI World Cup would have otherwise played between February 6 and March 7 in New Zealand.