The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the venues for the men’s and women’s World T20 tournaments in 2020, which for the first time will be played as standalone events in the same host country.
The women’s competition will run from February 21 to March 8, while the men’s will be held from October 18 to November 15. The tournaments will receive equal billing with both finals to be held at the MCG – the same venue which hosted the ICC ODI World Cup 2015.
Ten teams will contest the women’s event, with the top eight-ranked nations from 2018 represented – with two more teams to be added after a mid-2019 qualifying tournament.
There will be two pools of five, with the top two from each group to advance to the knock-out stages.
In the men’s tournament, 16 teams will be involved.
Meg Lanning, the Australian women’s captain, was excited about the prospect of a massive crowd for the final in 2020. “I’ve been in the crowd watching people play out there in front of 90,000 people and potentially the opportunity to be out there in the middle for that is really exciting,” she said on Tuesday.
Women’s group matches will be played at the WACA Ground, Melbourne’s Junction Oval, Canberra’s Manuka Oval and Sydney’s Spotless Stadium, with warm-ups played at Brisbane’s Allan Border Field and Adelaide’s Gladys Elphick Park. The semi-finals will be played at the SCG.
Along with the MCG, SCG and the Adelaide Oval, men’s matches will be played at Perth Stadium, Geelong’s Kardinia Park, the Gabba and Blundstone Arena in Hobart. The SCG and the Adelaide Oval will host the semi-finals, in a blow for Perth Stadium which was keen to host one of the showpiece matches.
Steve Smith, the Australian captain, said it was “incredibly exciting” that Australia would host the World T20 for the first time. “We are looking forward to it,” he said. “Looking back to 2015 with the World Cup in Australia, just the support we had… and all the games like India vs South Africa (85,000 at the MCG)… was something incredible.”
A full schedule of the World T20 will be announced at a later date.
