World T20 champions crowned in 2020 could hold trophy for less than a year
Next year’s Twenty20 World Cup champion will have a short hold on the trophy with the next edition of the event to be scheduled in 2021 in India.
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The winner of next year’s Twenty20 World Cup will hold the trophy for just 12 months in the latest bizarre example of ICC scheduling.
Australia is investing every possible resource in its pursuit of winning the tournament on home soil, although it will be off to India the following year for another T20 World Cup.
While dates are not locked in, India is expecting it to be staged at the back end of 2021.
That could fall less than a year after the MCG hosts next year’s final on November 15.
India also hosted the 2016 T20 World Cup and will host the next ODI World Cup in 2023.
The ICC had promised India the ODI Champions Trophy in 2021, but that tournament has been dying a slow death over the past decade.
When it was finally scrapped for 2021 it was replaced by another T20 World Cup, ensuring India did not miss out on hosting a global tournament.
While only the eight full member nations competed in the Champions Trophy, the T20 World Cup will be open to 16 countries and is the format the ICC wants to drive global growth.
The schedule beyond 2023 is being thrashed out at the moment, and it is still being decided whether to stage the T20 World Cup either once or twice in four-year cycles moving forward.
However ICC powerbrokers are unsure what qualifying will look like for the 2021 tournament in India and they are likely to be pressed for time.
Qualifying for next year’s Australian tournament started with Argentina playing subregional games all the way back in February last year.
In total 68 countries have participated and 17 subregional qualifying events have been staged across the world.
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The ICC has paid for teams to travel and play over the past 18 months and the global qualifiers wrapped up in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday with six countries progressing to next year’s final stage.
They will be held in Geelong and Hobart on the eve of the World Cup, with the two pools topped by favourites Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and four tickets to the main event up for grabs.
Papua New Guinea players were greeted with a hero’s welcome at Port Moresby airport this week after they made it through to the Geelong playoffs next October.
The complicated qualifying system saw Saint Helena, a volcanic tropical island in the South Atlantic Ocean with a population of 5000 people, win its first two matches last year.