ICC chief executive wants more teams in future World T20 tournaments

ICC chief executive Dave Richardson says that he wants to see the inclusion of more teams in the current format of the World T20 competition. He said that more and more teams can be included in the first and second rounds of the tournament.

“I think, the format itself works. Whether we promoted those first round matches well enough, that is a question we need to answer at a later stage and review it,” Richardson said before the finals of the women’s and men’s final.

He also said that the ICC was looking at including 1 or 2 more teams in the first or the second rounds of the tournament. This will give more opportunities to the associate teams and if a team loses two matches, that team will have a chance to go through when the group has 5 teams instead of four teams. In a group of four teams, there is no chance of going through.

Richardson said that this will be more useful if the tournament had Super 12 group instead of super 10, which will give more chances to associate nations to qualify for the second round of the tournament and it will also increase the number of matches in the tournament as well.

He also elaborated the reason for men’s World T20 going to a four-year gap, instead of the usual 2-year gap, he said, “The danger, of course, is that if we keep pushing T20 and keep playing T20 events every two years, it will effectively cannibalise the other two.We want to make sure that we keep an even and more reasonable balance between the three formats. Hence, the decision to go with one men’s World T20 in a four-year cycle.”

On the 2019 Cricket World cup being a 10 team competition, Richardson said that it was done to ensure the financial health of the ICC tournaments and that this format was the most competitive one amongst every other format.

[The IOC is] not interested in beach cricket or six-a-side cricket. They would want the T20 format to be used in the Olympics,” Richardson said.

“I think, the IOC would like cricket but they would only take us if all the members were fully committed including India. Now the matter is being discussed again at the April meeting,” Richardson added.