The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced that an investigation into the 2024 T20 World Cup will take place. The investigation will be overseen by a panel consisting of three ICC board directors: Roger Twose, Lawson Naidoo, and Imran Khawaja. The group will present its findings later in the year.
Prior to this, ESPNcricinfo had reported that the amount of money spent on the US part of the tournament and the Caribbean leg’s organisation were under investigation. All 108 members of the ICC attended the annual conference in Colombo from July 19 to 22, where the decision to form a review panel was made. The three-person panel will hire a separate consulting firm to conduct the review, and then they will report back to the board.
The Women’s T20 World Cup’s 2030 extension to 16 teams was also approved by the ICC. There were eight teams that competed in the tournament’s first year in 2009, and by 2016, there were ten. The October 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh will similarly include ten teams. Twelve teams will compete in the 2026 edition; the qualification deadline is October 31, 2024, with a potential increase to sixteen teams in 2030.
The ICC announced that the eight regional qualifying berths for the next Men’s T20 World Cup in 2026 will be distributed as follows: two teams from each of Africa and Europe, one from the Americas, and three teams from Asia and East Asia Pacific (EAP) combined. Asia had two seats and EAP had one previously.
Additionally, the ICC declared that USA Cricket and Cricket Chile had been “formally put on notice” for failing to comply with ICC membership requirements. They have a year to make the necessary corrections.
“Neither member is considered to have in place a fit for purpose detailed governance and administrative structure and systems,” the ICC said in a release. “The ICC Americas office will work with Cricket Chile to support them in remedying their non-compliance. The board agreed that a normalisation committee comprising of board and management representatives will be set up to oversee and monitor USA Cricket’s compliance roadmap and the ICC board will reserve its right to suspend or expel the member for continued non-compliance.”