The long-awaited decision on the ICC Men's Twenty20 World Cup is finally official—the tournament has been postponed by a year, to 2021 in the same window, that is October-November. The ICC also announced the rescheduling of the T20 WC in 2022 to October-November, as well as the Men's 50-over World Cup 2023 to the October-November window.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for teams to train and participate in such big events, or for countries to host them, owing to the health and safety concerns. The rescheduling means the BCCI can now plan for a delayed IPL in the original T20 World Cup window of late Spetember to early November. The Indian cricket board has been waiting for a formal announcement from the ICC regarding the T20 WC's rescheduling, before announcing the IPL schedule.
The ICC board which met today later confirmed via a statement that India will host the 2023 World Cup. However, there is no clarity on who will host the 2021 and 2022 ICC T20 World Cups. Australia and India both are keen on hosting the event in 2021 and an impasse continues over the same.
As per the original schedules, the postponed World Cup was set to be played in Australia later this year, and the 2021 event was to be hosted by India.
When discussions on the possible postponement of this year's T20 World Cup took place, the BCCI, reportedly, made it clear that it was keen on retaining the hosting rights of the 2021 edition. It did not want to host the T20 World Cup in 2022 as it gave it little time to prepare for the bigger competition—the Men's 50-over World Cup, to be held in February-March 2023.
Meanwhile, the ICC's commercial arm—ICC Business Corporation (IBC)—said, "The IBC Board agreed to continue to monitor the rapidly changing situation and assess all the information available in order to make a considered decision on future hosts to ensure the sport is able to stage safe and successful global events in 2021 and 2022. The IBC Board will also continue to evaluate the situation in relation to being able to stage the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2021 in New Zealand in February next year. In the meantime, planning for this event continues as scheduled."
ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: “We have undertaken a comprehensive and complex contingency planning exercise and through this process, our number one priority has been to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in the sport.
“The decision to postpone the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup was taken after careful consideration of all of the options available to us and gives us the best possible opportunity of delivering two safe and successful T20 World Cups for fans around the world.
“Our Members now have the clarity they need around event windows to enable them to reschedule lost bilateral and domestic cricket. Moving the Men’s Cricket World Cup to a later window is a critical element of this and gives us a better chance of maintaining the integrity of the qualification process. This additional time will be used to reschedule games that might be lost because of the pandemic ensuring qualification can be decided on the field of play."
