ICC T20 Women’s World Cup, a biennial international series has come too far from its first edition in 2009. Australia is now going to host the 7th edition of ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in 2020. Adelaide and Brisbane are chosen for the warm-up matches whereas round-robin, knockout stages will be held in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Perth. As per Nick Hockley, CEO of the championship, it is probably going to have the biggest crowd in any of the women sporting events ever.
Australia Calling
The first showdown will happen between defending champion, world no. 1 Australia and no. 5th India in T20 rankings. However, India can’t be taken lightly after its stellar performance in 2017 Women’s World Cup ODI and a recent win in West Indies series, both at the ODI level and T20.
In total, ten teams will feature to fight for the Cup, out of all, 8 got automatic qualification based on the 2018 Women’s T20 World Cup, and the other two, Bangladesh and Thailand seized the place after 2019 T20 World Cup Qualifier, played in Scotland this year.
These teams are categorized into Group A and B, where the former includes Australia, India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, the latter will have West Indies, Thailand, England, South Africa, Pakistan. They will have robin rounds within themselves and then churn out the winners for knock out rounds.
Promises of Past
Furthermore, the whole cricket world is waiting with excitement for the face-off between the world’s best cricket teams led by women. As exceptional players are going to gather in Australia next year, we can expect some excellent scores. The adventurous experience of the T20 World Cup 2018 in West Indies has raised the bar high by several notches. Some of the highest wickets were taken by players like Deandra Dottin and Stafanie Taylor of West Indies, Ashleigh Gardner, Megan Schutt, Ellyse Perry from Australia, Auja Patil, Radha Yadav from India.
Startling performances in terms of batting were put by Alyssa Healy of Australia, Suzie Bates of New Zealand, Javeria Khan of Pakistan, Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur of India. Harmanpreet is the then and next ICC Women T20 World Cup 2020 captain from India. She has records of becoming the first woman cricketer of India to pull off a century in any of the Women’s T20 International matches and this year in October she achieved the feat of the first cricketer all over India, female or male, having played 100 T20 International innings. Although Mithali Raj retiring out of T20 format is indeed a setback, her leadership has groomed the team sufficient enough to put out a vivid performance, recently seen in India’s 5 match win in West Indies series. Even though squads for the upcoming series are not announced yet, past performances and the current progress of teams makes the forthcoming ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, an event worth watching.