Sports Desk

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Sunday said that they are eyeing to expand women’s cricket by increasing numbers in the global tournament that starts with the next edition of ICC Women’s T20 World Cup being played by 12 teams.

This year, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 will be played by 10 teams on 3-20 October in Dhaka and Sylhet.

The teams are divided into two groups of five each with Group A includes Australia, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and QF1 while Group B has South Africa, England, West Indies, Bangladesh and QF2.

“Expanding the opportunities in a tournament, so I know the event that’s coming up here in October is a 10-team event. The next version of the Women’s T20 World Cup will be a 12-team event and there will be discussions whether that expands further,” ICC CEO Geoffrey Allardice told the reporters in a press conference at a hotel in the capital on Sunday.

“Even the ICC Women’s Championship is now being expanded to a 10-team event, so the two teams in Bangladesh and Ireland who are participating for the first time are getting better exposure to the better opponents and getting comfortable with some of the best players in the world,” he said.

“And I think it will take time, the ICC creates a structure by which teams can compete. If you look at the associate member cricket over the last few years, there have been as many women’s T20 internationals played amongst associate members as there have been men’s. So, the framework to compete is there,” he continued.

“Sometimes they are going to perform well and get through the qualifiers. I think we are trying to expand the number of opportunities for teams in developing to ruin a spot on the big stage because that’s the best way to promote them into the world cups and I think that’s the next step for us,” the ICC CEO added.

Allardice said that the prize money for both the men and women’s teams will be the same in ICC events when his attention was drawn regarding payments disparity between men’s and women’s cricket. “I think I can answer on behalf of the prize money which is what the ICC manages.

Each of the competing teams decides what their players get in terms of the match fee but in terms of ICC prize money, the amount of prize money to the team that wins the Women’s T20 World Cup will be the same as the amount of prize money that’s allocated to the team that wins the Men’s T20 World Cup,” he added.

“So, if you finish first, you get the same amount of money, if you win a match the same amount of match fee would be there. So, there is parity in prize money between our men’s and women’s events,” he further added.

Allardice further said that until there is change in Afghanistan women’s cricket cannot develop there.
Afghanistan are currently the only full member nation without a women's team and as a result Afghanistan Cricket Board could not send their women’s team in the upcoming ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.

Last March, Cricket Australia -- who had already cancelled the historic one-off Test against Afghanistan after Taliban took over and withdrew from the ODI series last year -- also postponed their scheduled three-match T20I series against Afghanistan, expected to be held in August in UAE, citing no improvements in Taliban's stance on women.

“I think at the moment, the Afghanistan Cricket Board, who is our member, is unable to fill the team. Until something changes, that will remain the situation. It isn’t that Afghanistan Cricket Board wasn’t developing women’s cricket previously, it is just that they are not able to at the moment,” he ended.