After cancellation of a few major cricket tournaments, big news came from International Cricket Council today. The ICC decided to call off all qualifying events for upcoming World Cups for 2021 and 2023 for the time being in the wake of the pandemic worldwide.
ICC takes a major call
On Thursday International Cricket Council decided to postpone all qualifying events for the 2021 Twenty20 World Cup and 50-overs version in 2023. The matches were scheduled to be held before June 30 but the growing threat of the COVID-19 globally made things uncertain all of a sudden. The novel virus already affected more than 470,800 people around the world and killed over 21200 according to a Reuters tally. All sort of events is being postponed daily due to the pandemic. All sports events have been majorly affected as well. Even the Olympics have faced the corona effect too. Amid this situation, the ICC took the call of postponing the events scheduled before June 30.
“In light of the significant global health concerns at the current time and the restrictions on movement imposed by governments across the world, the ICC has taken the decision to postpone all events up until the end of June subject to further review,” Chris Tetley, ICC head of events said.
India to host the tournaments
The ICC head further added that planning and related work would continue meanwhile to find out the options available for the qualifiers. “Work will continue on contingency plans and options for both men’s qualification pathways. We will provide updates in due course on these plans and decisions on the staging of the remaining events this year.”
As India is the designated host of the 2021 T20 World Cup and the 50-overs version in 2023, now at least eight events got postponed followed by the ICC decision. After a number of cricket tournaments scheduled in April and May got cancelled, now this news came as another disappointing one for the cricket lovers around the world.
This also raises a few eyebrows as this is a hint of things getting a little more time to become normal.
