The International Cricket Council has announced that the 2024 edition of the Women’s T20 World Cup will now be hosted by the UAE.
It was originally due to be held in Bangladesh but the cricket-mad nation has had to pull out of hosting duties at the last minute.
Instead, the Women’s T20 World Cup will now be played in Dubai and Sharjah throughout October of this year.
This means that the best women’s cricketers in the world will all play in the UAE between Friday October 3 and Sunday October 20.
Although the exact venues of the ninth edition of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup were not revealed in the cricket authority’s announcement, we can expect to see matches played at the 25,000 capacity Dubai International Cricket Stadium in Sports City and the Sharjah Cricket Stadium.
The UAE was selected ahead of Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe as alternate hosts to Bangladesh, it was confirmed on Tuesday August 20.
For the uninitiated, T20 stands for Twenty20 and is a much faster-paced version of cricket as it plays to a maximum of 20 overs with each team having just a single innings. This allows for more matches to be played over the course of
Cricket is hugely popular in the UAE and has played host to several major cricket tournaments in recent years including the DP World International League T20 at the start of this year.
With a massive expat population of cricket-loving nations, it’s bound to be a popular tournament for lovers of the sport.
ICC selects UAE as Women’s World Cup host
ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice thanked the Emirates Cricket Board for stepping in to host the tournament at the last minute.
He said: “It is a shame not to be hosting the Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh as we know the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) would have staged a memorable event.
“I would like to thank the team at the BCB for exploring all avenues to try and enable the event to be hosted in Bangladesh, but travel advisories from the governments of a number of the participating teams meant that wasn’t feasible.
“However, they will retain hosting rights. We look forward to taking an ICC global event to Bangladesh in the near future.
“I’d also like to thank the Emirates Cricket Board for stepping in to host on behalf of the BCB and Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe for their generous offers of support, and we look forward to seeing ICC global events in both of those countries in 2026.”
Which countries are playing at the Women’s T20 World Cup?
Australia will return to defend their Women’s T20 World Cup crown against nine other nations.
The 2023 winners qualified alongside the rest of the top six nations from the previous edition of the tournament held in 2023. The other nations are England, India, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies.
While the United Arab Emirates has stepped in to host the tournament, it is believed that Bangladesh retains their qualification rights as original hosts and will still field a team. The ICC has yet to confirm whether this is the case however.
The next highest-ranked team in the Women’s T20I rankings Pakistan also qualify while the final two spots are taken up by Scotland and Sri Lanka.
Ticket information has not yet been released and we currently don’t know the full schedule of the tournament following the change of host.
Source: Timeoutdubai
