The Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 will be moved from Bangladesh to the United Arab Emirates, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has confirmed.
The ICC said the event, scheduled to take place from 3 to 20 October, will now be staged in Dubai and Sharjah after Bangladesh was deemed too risky to visit by many of the participating teams.
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup is a professional T20I tournament held between women’s national cricket teams. The tournament, now being held every two years, was first played in 2009 in England. The last tournament held in 2023 in South Africa was contested by 10 teams.
The tournament has been moved from Bangladesh in the aftermath of the countrywide anti-government protests staged through July and early August, which ended when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India.
An interim government has been put in place since, but incidents of vandalism and looting, as well as acts of violence, have been reported from Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh government had made last-ditch efforts through the United Nations (UN) to hold on to the World Cup hosting rights, but some countries, including Australia, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland) had issued travel advisories to their citizens against travelling to Bangladesh.
The UAE, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe had all emerged as options to stage the World Cup after India’s BCCI had rejected the ICC’s offer to host it.
The UAE had earlier hosted the 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup, along with Oman, when Covid-19 forced it out of India, in addition to staging a number of qualifier tournaments.
ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said: “It is a shame not to be hosting the Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh as we know the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) would have staged a memorable event.
“I would like to thank the team at the BCB for exploring all avenues to try and enable the event to be hosted in Bangladesh but travel advisories from the governments of a number of the participating teams meant that wasn’t feasible.
“However, they will retain hosting rights. We look forward to taking an ICC global event to Bangladesh in the near future.
“I’d also like to thank the Emirates Cricket Board for stepping in to host on behalf of the BCB and Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe for their generous offers of support, and we look forward to seeing ICC global events in both of those countries in 2026.”
Meanwhile, ICC Chair Greg Barclay confirmed to the Board that he will not stand for a third term and will step down from the post when his current tenure finishes at the end of November.
Barclay was appointed as the Independent ICC Chair in November 2020, before being re-elected in 2022.
Current directors are now required to put forward nominations for the next Chair by 27 August 2024 and if there is more than one candidate, an election will be held with the term of the new Chair commencing on 1 December 2024.
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