India to host 2021 World T20, Australia to host in 2022

The coronavirus pandemic led to the International Cricket Council (ICC) postponing the World T20 in Australia, which was supposed to take place in the latter parts of 2020. But that created confusion as India already held the rights to organising a World T20 in 2021 and this year's tournament being postponed meant there could be a clash for the rights. 

But that confusion has been cleared up as ICC has announced that India will be holding on to their rights of organising the World T20 in 2021 and Australia will host the 2022 edition. 

The other decision taken was to postpone the Women's World Cup in 2021, set to be hosted by New Zealand, to February-March in 2022. 

The decisions were taken by the commercial subsidiary of the ICC, IBC following an extensive contingency planning exercise which has taken into account the health, cricket and commercial impact of Covid-19 around the world.

"Over the last few months as we have considered how we return to staging global events, our number one priority has been to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in ICC events," ICC Acting Chairman Imran Khwaja said.

He added, "The decisions the Board have taken today are in the best interests of the sport, our partners and importantly our fans. I'd like to thank our partners at the BCCI, Cricket Australia and Cricket New Zealand as well as the Australian and New Zealand governments for their continued support and commitment to a safe return to ICC events."

"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 ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney.

"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," Manu went on to add. 

The World T20 postponement saw BCCI use up that window to organise the IPL in UAE. The tournament will be held from September 19 to November 10.