MELBOURNE: Australia and New Zealand will host the ICC World Twenty20 tournament in 2020, the game’s governing body announced in Melbourne on Tuesday.

International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive David Richardson, speaking four days before the World Cup starts in Melbourne, confirmed the T20 event will be based in Australia for the first time.

“It’s an honour to be hosting a global event on behalf of the ICC,” Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland said, sitting alongside Richardson at Tuesday’s press conference. “We haven’t cast our minds that far ahead yet, 2020 seems like a long way away. We’ll focus our attention on that after this tournament.”

It has been 23 years since the two nations hosted a major cricket event, the 1992 World Cup.

Richardson, who represented South Africa in that tournament, lamented the long wait.

“We’d like to come back to Australia and New Zealand more often,” he said. “The fact is the time zone for this part of the world, relative to the rest of the cricket playing world, is not ideal. But what makes it special is the tournaments have come few and far between, which adds to the excitement and the level of anticipation for this event.”

Meanwhile, the ICC hopes associate members Ireland and Afghanistan can play 10 ODIs a year to prepare for qualification for the 2019 World Cup but says it will be ‘difficult’ to give them any guarantees.

Ireland and Afghanistan, who will compete as one of four associate members among 14 teams at the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, face a tougher path to qualify for 2019, with the number of teams trimmed to 10 and the first eight spots allocated according to world ranking.

The remaining two berths for the tournament in England and Wales will be decided by qualifying matches between a logjam of lower-ranked full members and associate teams.

Ireland have long lamented a paucity of international matches against top sides like Australia and India as a barrier to their improvement and ability to compete at the top level.

“It’s difficult to guarantee matches for them,” Richardson said. “I think it’s important that we provide the top associate members the opportunity. And certainly the indications are that the full members will support Ireland in that objective.

“For the moment it’s Afghanistan and Ireland who are in the picture. We have to look after them in particular.

“They will not only be playing matches against the other full members like England, and teams that may be visiting England, they’ll also be playing amongst themselves quite frequently.

“We’re working on them having at least 10 ODIs per season leading up to qualification for that next World Cup. So the opportunity will be there.

“Australia have talked about tours involving Afghanistan.

“I don’t think we would have gone down this route if we weren’t confident that we, as I say, [could] make sure that Ireland, Afghanistan both are playing in the region of 8-10 ODIs per year.”

The ICC had originally intended to reduce the teams for the 2015 tournament hosted by Australia and New Zealand but backflipped after an outcry from association teams led by Ireland after the 2011 tournament in the subcontinent.

However, cricket’s global governing body have been adamant 2015 will be the last hurrah for the 14-team format at the quadrennial tournament which has been criticised for being too long and having too many one-sided results between mismatched teams.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2015

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