Printed On 15 Jul 2026
The Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) has introduced a revamped format for the lads’s 2027 one-day worldwide World Cup that would result in an extra fixture between India and Pakistan.
The restructure, revealed on Wednesday, comes after issues had been expressed in regards to the prospect of too many useless rubbers, which in flip would result in sparse crowds at venues, and the variety of foregone conclusions on the latest T20 World Cup.
Whereas subsequent 12 months’s version in Southern Africa stays a 14-team competitors, the three lowest-ranked qualifiers will now participate in a preliminary spherical, and simply one among them will progress to a 12-team most important group stage.
That may now characteristic simply two swimming pools of six groups with a brand new “Tremendous Seven” stage changing the earlier “Tremendous Six” spherical robin.
Considerably, there might be no quarterfinals with the 50-over event denied the additional jeopardy and curiosity that comes with an additional spherical of clear-cut knockout matches.
The ICC, nevertheless, insisted in an announcement that the brand new ODI World Cup construction “creates better context, competitiveness and consequence through the occasion”.
An extra workforce within the round-robin section additionally will increase the prospects of an additional match between India and Pakistan, who share a bitter rivalry that has been soured additional in recent times.
The eagerness for cricket on the subcontinent, which in flip generates profitable broadcast rights and big industrial revenues for the ICC, makes a match between India and Pakistan probably the most worthwhile within the sport.
However India and Pakistan not meet exterior ICC occasions as political tensions between the border nations imply they’re in impact barred by their very own governments from going through one another.
The final bilateral sequence India performed in Pakistan was in 2006 (Check and ODI sequence).
One other change authorised final week on the ICC’s annual board assembly in Edinburgh will see the subsequent males’s T20 World Cup in 2028 stay a 20-team competitors however with 10 sides qualifying from the group stage slightly than eight.
The 2 best-performing groups within the “Tremendous 10” will mechanically safe a semifinal spot with a brand new eliminator stage to resolve their opponents.
ICC loans Cricket West Indies $12.82m
In a separate announcement, the ICC mentioned it had authorised a $12.82m mortgage to Cricket West Indies (CWI) “to assist the member board”.
Not like different main worldwide cricket groups, the West Indies are a regional facet, and the relative financial weak point of its constituent Caribbean islands and territories together with the journey distances concerned places the CWI at a substantial monetary drawback in contrast with the “Massive Three” of India, England and Australia.
Through the latest ladies’s T20 World Cup in England, West Indies captain Hayley Matthews lamented an “unfair” funding ecosystem after her cash-strapped facet’s eight-wicket semifinal thrashing by Australia.
“The explanation we had been so profitable again in 2012 to 2016 is as a result of ladies’s cricket was based mostly off pure expertise at the moment,” Matthews mentioned.
“The minute that funding comes into the image, we’ve seen the hole widen rather a lot. … I really feel prefer it’s a bit unfair generally.”
