2021 ICC Women’s World Cup Postponed, To Be Held In 2022

The ICC, on Friday (August 7), postponed the 2021 women’s ODI World Cup, scheduled in New Zealand between February 6 and March 7, to 2022. Along with the decision on the women’s T20 World Cup, the ICC also announced that India would host the ICC T20 World Cup in 2021 while Australia would host the same competition in 2022.

All these decisions were taken by the ICC Business Corporation, the business development wing of the ICC, which met virtually on Friday. The women’s World Cup is the second global event the ICC has been forced to postponed in the last two months due to the coronavirus pandemic. In July, the ICC was forced to postpone this year’s T20 World Cup which was to be held in Australia in October-November.

Speaking about the decision, ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said that the postponement of the World Cup will given the women players the time to prepare for the mega event. There has been no international game for the women stars since the T20 World Cup in Australia earlier this year.

“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,” said Sawhney said.

“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.

“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.

Meanwhile, the format of the Women’s Cricket World Cup will remain as it was for 2021. Five teams have already qualified for the event and that will stand for 2022. The original global qualification event to determine the final three teams to contest the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup was scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in July 2020, but this was postponed due to COVID-19. The qualification event will now be held in 2021.

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