The International Cricket Council (ICC) in its recently concluded annual conference in Birmingham, England has revealed the 4 nations who’ll be hosting the major ICC Women’s tournament in the 2024-27 cycle. The tournament hosts were picked through a competitive bidding process which was overseen by a board sub-committee chaired by Martin Snedden, along with Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Skerritt.
The next year’s ICC T20 World Cup will be played in South Africa and post that the start of the new cycle 2024-27 will see Bangladesh hosting the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup, that’ll be the first time that a major Women’s ICC tournament will be hosted by the nation after 2014 Women’s T20 World Cup. The tournament will be held between September-October and will comprise 10 teams playing 23 matches.
India for 2025 has won the bidding for the ICC Women’s World Cup (50-over format). This will be India’s fourth time hosting an ICC Women’s tournament. The tournament will see 8 teams participating in the event which will see 31 matches. Host India and the 5 other nations will get a direct entry into the tournament and the remaining two slots will see a couple come through the qualifying event.
As reported in the Times of India (TOI), a source explained BCCI’s move on opting to host the ODI World Cup stating, “Since BCCI is bullish about starting the Women’s IPL from next season, I think they wouldn’t like to hold any other marquee T20 women’s event right away. Hence the decision to bid for the 2025 World Cup seems logical.”
The next event on the calendar is the Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 which will be hosted by England in June. This will be the first time the T20 tournament will be held in England and also the number of teams will go up from 10 to 12 and a total of 33 matches will be played.
The final event on the cycle will be hosted by Sri Lanka. They’ll be hosting the inaugural edition of the Women’s ICC Champions Trophy and their participation in the tournament will be subject to qualification. The Champions Trophy will be played in the T20 format and the tournament will be held in February 2026, with six teams competing for the trophy across 16 matches.
The launch of the ICC Championships Trophy is a piece of welcoming news, but with only 1 World Cup in the 50-over, One-Day International (ODI) format is not necessarily the right move and with talks of focus on reviving the downfall of ODI cricket there should have been atleast one more of the 50-over World Cup. Nevertheless, it’s exciting times ahead for women’s cricket and the right boost the women’s side of cricket had to receive has come with every year till 2027 having an ICC global event on the schedule.
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