The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the kickoff and the finale dates of the next T20 World Cup to be played in Australia. The tournament will kick off on 16th of October 2022 which is exactly 11 months away from now and the finale will be played on 13th of November.
Three of Australia’s historical grounds, Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), the Adelaide Oval and Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) will host the three knockouts of the tournament, the two semifinals and the final.
SCG and the Adelaide Oval will be the grounds hosting the semis, while the MCG, as always, has been picked to host the grand finale of the event. The same venue had hosted the final of the ODI World Cup 2015 as well, which was played in Australia and New Zealand.
Apart from Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, the other venues where the group matches of the super 12 round of the tournament will be played are Brisbane, Hobart, Perth and Geelong. While Brisbane, Hobart and Perth are fairly known venues, Geelong is a venue that has not hosted as many international games as some of the other historical venues of Australia.
T20 World Cup was held back to back in 2009 and 2010 too
This is the second time that the T20 World Cup is being held back to back at a gap of just one year. It had been held back to back previously in 2009 and 2010, as an ODI World Cup was scheduled to be played in 2011 and there would have been a case of coinciding of the two global events if the T20 World Cup was not held back to back in 2009 and 2010.
However, this time around, the tournament schedule was affected by COVID-19 pandemic. The two T20 World Cups were originally scheduled to be held in 2020 and 2021 in Australia and India respectively, but because of the logistics issues caused by the pandemic, the first event was postponed by two years, while the second event remained scheduled as it was. The venue of the second event was later changed from India to the UAE because of the pandemic again.
The 2020 T20 World Cup, which was postponed by two years, will now be played in Australia in 2022.
