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ICC World T20 2020
The seventh edition of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 tournament is scheduled to be held in Australia from 18th October to 15th November 2020. Due to the recent rise in the Global pandemic COVID-19, the future of the tournament was looking dense but in April 2020 the International Cricket Council has announced that despite the outbreak, the tournament is still planned to go on as scheduled. Following this announcement, a lot of questions were raised on the safety of the players and the people visiting to watch the matches, given the current lockdown situation due to the pandemic.
Recently a senior ICC official said that it would be “too big a risk” to go ahead with the tournament in the current year. Various reports of the T20 World Cup getting postponed also surfaced the news, however, ICC has clearly stated that these reports are inaccurate and that they are looking into multiple contingency plans and will take a final call on the subject in the next ICC’s meeting to be held on 10th June 2020.
Qualification Criteria
As on 31st December 2018, alongside the hosts Australia, the top-ranked ICC full members qualified automatically for the ICC World T20 2020. Now, from those 10 teams, the top 8 teams qualified straightaway to the Super 12s stage of the tournament. Only Sri Lanka and Bangladesh could not qualify for the Super 12s stage and are instead placed in the group stage. These two teams were accompanied by 6 teams who had qualified for the tournament by playing in the 2019 ICC T20 World Cup Qualifier. The top 4 teams from the group stage will eventually advance to the Super 12s. The United Arab Emirates and Nepal are two countries that could not qualify through regional competitions.
Ireland became the second team to qualify directly into the World Cup after winning Group B of the Qualifier tournament. The first team to qualify was Papua New Guinea. Surprising everyone, Papua New Guinea qualified for the first time for any World Championship format. They finished above the Netherlands on the net run rate and won Group A.
In the very first playoff in the qualifier, Netherlands beat UAE by 8 wickets to qualify for the World Cup. In the second qualifier, Namibia beat Oman to advance to their first T20 World cup. Scotland also beat the hosts UAE in the third qualifier and booked their birth in the world Cup. In the last qualifier, Oman beat Hong Kong by 12 runs to sail through, becoming the last team to qualify.
Venues
The International Cricket Council announced the following venues for the event, in January 2018:
1. Hobart
• Ground: Bellerive Oval
• Matches: 8
• Capacity: 20,000
2. Geelong
• Ground: Kardinia Park
• Matches: 6
• Capacity: 36,000
3. Brisbane
• Ground: The Gabba
• Matches: 4
• Capacity: 42,000
4. Perth
• Ground: Perth Stadium
• Matches: 6
• Capacity: 60,000
5. Sydney
• Ground: SCG
• Matches: 7 (semi-final)
• Capacity: 42,500
6. Adelaide
• Ground: Adelaide Oval
• Matches: 7 (semi-final)
• Capacity: 53,500
7. Melbourne
• Ground: MCG
• Matches: 7 (final)
• Capacity: 94,000
The recent outbreak of the pandemic has put a halt on everything that used to happen around us. To curb the spread, all the affected countries have taken serious measures. We hope everything returns to normal and that we can save more and more lives and when all of this is over, we can buy our tickets to one of the biggest Cricketing events in the World.
