ICC World Cup 2023 Hosting Rights Will Stay With India - Dave Richardson

International Cricket Council CEO Dave Richardson, on Thursday, confirmed that the hosting rights for ICC World Cup 2023 will stay with India. In fact, India will host the 2021 Champions Trophy as well. There were reports in the recent past that India could lose out on its hosting rights due to tax exemption issues.

However, the governing body has cleared India is good to serve as the hosts despite the tax issues. The Indian government had refused to give tax exemption to ICC when it had hosted the World T20 Cup in 2016.

India’s World Cup hosting rights are safe.

Subsequently, ICC had asked the Board of Control for Cricket in India to pay $23 million as compensation or lose the hosting rights for the 2023 World Cup.

“Getting tax exemptions is very important for world cricket because every cent that is made by the ICC revenue wise is put back into the game. This helps countries like the West Indies who don’t generate as much revenue,” said Richardson at an event to announce a five-year partnership with Coco-Cola.

“But having said that there are no plans of taking away the hosting (from India) and I’m sure we will get it (exemption) in the end, we’ve still got a lot of time,” he added.

Meanwhile, ICC has announced the fixtures of the 2020 World Cup. India and Pakistan will not lock horns in the group stages for the first time since 2011. Richardson capsulized the groups were made according to rankings.

India and Pakistan are not in the same group.

“We have arranged the groups in a way that has credibility and is based on the ranking system. The teams are placed according to their ranks. In this case, Pakistan was number one in the rankings in their group and India number two,” Richardson said.

“We found no credible way of putting them in the same group. Hopefully, from a world perspective, they will meet each other in the semifinals or final.”

Player Conduct is crucial.

On the other hand, ICC needs to deal with the corruption cases in the game. Furthermore, Dave Richardson also wants to focus the energy on the player’s conduct. Players like Sarfraz Ahmed, Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul were in the news for the wrong reasons in the recent past.

“We have taken a more proactive approach to disrupt the actions of certain frivolous individuals that wander around trying to fix cricket matches. We continuously are trying to disrupt them as much as possible and the players are doing the right thing by reporting any incident.”

Meanwhile, India had hosted the ICC 2011 World Cup. India National Cricket Team had become the first team to win the tournament while hosting the big event. Subsequently, Australia also clinched the 2015 World Cup while hosting the ODI showpiece.