India will remain as hosts of the T20 World Cup in 2021 while Australia will host the T20 World Cup in 2022 - having been unable to do so in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the Women's 50-over World Cup, scheduled to be held in New Zealand in February-March 2021, has been postponed to Feb-March 2022, the ICC announced on Friday (August 7) after a meeting of the International Business Corporation (the commercial subsidiary of the ICC).

Earlier, following a meeting of the IBC Board on July 20, the cricket governing body had announced the postponement of the 2020 edition of the Men's T20 World Cup and had also marked a window for the three men's events in 2021, 2022 and 2023. ICC Men's T20 World Cup, 2021 is scheduled to be played in October-November 2021, with the final on November 14. The 2022 edition of the T20 World Cup will be held in October-November 2022, with the final on November 13. The ICC Men's Cricket World Cup, 2023 will be held in India in October-November 2023, with the final on November 26, 2023.

"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," ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said.

The format for the Men's T20 World Cup in 2021 will remain as it was in 2020, with all teams that qualified for the 2020 event to be part of the event in India in 2021. A new qualification process will be in place for the Men's T20 World Cup in 2022.

For the 50-over Women's World Cup, five teams had qualified for the tournament originally scheduled in 2021. The final three teams were to be decided through a qualification competition that was scheduled to be played in Sri Lanka in July 2020 but was postponed because of the pandemic. That qualification event will now be held in 2021 with the ICC yet to decide on the dates.

"We have taken the decision 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," Sawhney said.

"There has been no women's international cricket played since the conclusion of the ICC Women's T20 World Cup earlier this year and due to the varying impact of COVID-19 globally that is likely to remain the situation for a number of the teams. Moving the event by 12 months gives all competing teams the chance to play a sufficient level of cricket ahead of both the qualification event and leading into a Cricket World Cup so the integrity of the tournament is maintained," he added.

Source : https://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-new...tralia-in-2022