ICC increases teams at Women’s T20 World Cup

The Internal Cricket Council's (ICC) Women's T20 World Cup is scheduled for a boost as the number of teams participating in the event will increase.

In making the announcement on its website yesterday, the ICC board said that the number of teams at the 2030 Women's T20 World Cup will move to 16. The global event has seen teams increase from eight in the inaugural edition in 2009 to 10 in 2016. This number is set to grow to 12 in the 2026 staging of the tournament, set to be played in England.

The organisation also said that it is moving to have equity between the men's and women's games. This year's staging of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup saw the biggest staging of the event. For the first time 20 teams participated in the event with India emerging as winners.

Yesterday's decision to increase participants at the 2030 Women's T20 World Cup was made at the ICC's annual conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The conference was attended by all 108 ICC members.

The four-day conference held just days before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympics, focused on the theme "Capitalising on the Olympic Opportunity" ahead of cricket's inclusion in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Several other decisions were made at the conference.

The board confirmed that the qualification cut-off date for the 2026 edition will be October 2024. It was also decided that there will be an allocation of eight regional qualifying spots for the ICC Men's T20 World Cup in 2026. Under this new structure, two teams each will qualify from Africa and Europe, one from the Americas, and three from a combined Asia and East Asia-Pacific (EAP) regional final. Previously, Asia was allocated two spots and EAP one.

Paul Reiffel was also appointed to the ICC Men's Cricket Committee as the Elite Panel Umpire, while Richie Richardson was confirmed as the Elite Panel Referee on the committee.