ICC to proceed with Men’s Twenty20 World Cup in India

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced that the men’s Twenty20 World Cup, taking place in India in October and November this year, is still on course to go ahead.

The announcement comes despite a huge spike in India’s COVID-19 cases, with the ICC insisting there is no cause to accelerate contingency planning and follows the postponement of the women’s version of the tournament, to be played in New Zealand, to 2022 “because of the impact the pandemic has had on cricket globally.”

Advising that he is confident the tournament in India will be played and that there is not yet serious concern that the event may need to be postponed or relocated, ICC acting Chief Executive, Geoff Allardice stated “we are certainly proceeding on the assumption that the event is going ahead as planned.

“We’re working with the BCCI and different elements of that event at the moment, but we do have back-up plans that can be activated when the time’s right.”

COVID-19 vaccinations will not be mandatory for players at the tournament, with Allardice saying this is not realistic with different vaccine rollouts in different nations.

He stated “I think our medial committee and our board are recommending that participants should be vaccinated wherever possible, but I think the dynamic in each country is going to be different, both with the supply of vaccine or the availability of vaccine, and where sportspeople or international sportspeople might be in the queue to receive those vaccines.”

Allardice went on to say “we’re not oblivious to what is going on around the world and we continue to take updates on all aspects of how sporting events are being run and the situation in each country. Cricket is being played in a number of countries around the world, we’re taking lessons from all of those and proceeding as planned.

“We do have back-up plans that can be activated when the time is right. We’re not anywhere near that timeline yet. We’ve got a number of months to be able to see how the situation is and how cricket events are being run.”