Under-19 Women's WC is in the schedule for January 2023, confirms Geoff Allardice

The development of Women’s cricket has been immense over the last few years and ICC has been playing a big part in it. The U19 Cricket World Cup for women has been in the thoughts for a long time now and in 2019, it was confirmed that the tournament will take place in 2021. However, the Covid-19 pandemic had not allowed the inaugural edition to get underway yet.

However, ICC CEO Geoff Allardice has recently confirmed that the tournament will now be held next year in 2023. This will be a huge boost to women’s cricket as the roots for international stages have been laid down in the U19 down cricket. So far, in the men’s game, U19 cricket has found a lot of great talented cricketers including the likes of Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson, and Steve Smith.

It’s very much on the cards: Geoff Allardice

Allardice mentioned that the inaugural edition of the tournament will now take place in 2023 and the venues will now be decided in the upcoming ICC meetings. He added that the structure will be similar to the men’s U19 World Cup and the qualification for the tournament will take place this year.

“The Under-19 Women’s World Cup is in the schedule for January 2023,” Allardice said. “Over the next couple of months, ahead of our April board meetings, we will be looking for potential hosts for that tournament with the hosts to be decided at the next board meetings. It’s very much on the cards for next year.”

“We are looking at a similar structure to the Men’s Under-19 World Cup in terms of the number of teams and the opportunity for associate members to participate. This has been discussed for a couple of years now and Covid has postponed when we were going to play the first edition of it. What that has done has given some countries more time to get their programs in place and get their squad structures organized, so I think the qualification will take place during 2022,” he added.

Meanwhile, the women’s cricket World Cup is scheduled to take place in the month of March and April this year and the selection committees have started to announce their teams already. New Zealand is all set to host the tournament with England starting as the defending champions.