Even though the allocation of T20I status for both Men’s and Women’s T20 matches between International teams having Associate membership under ICC is a much required boost for many Cricket Boards, there still remains some questions about hosting them in the first place as minimum ground requirements and costs for having ICC match officials are some of the things the host Board needs to sort out.
Earlier this year, in the biggest ever move made yet in the history of Associate Cricket, International Cricket Council (ICC) CEO David Richardson confirmed that T20I status for all of its 104 members have been approved at the Board Meeting in Kolkata.
12 Full members and 92 Associate members along with Nepal (Whose Cricket Board remains suspended until ICC Annual General Meeting in Jun 2018) will now have T20I status for both Men’s and Women’s National squads.
With the status, all bi-lateral series among the Associates will have more context and meaning. However, the recently concluded Saudari Cup series between Malaysia Women and Singapore Women were not counted towards official T20I status or rankings. So, in all likelihood, the host Board will ask for the necessary approvals if they wish to host matches with status and count towards rankings points.
All Member women’s teams will be awarded T20I status on 01st Jul 2018, while all Member men’s teams will be awarded T20I status on 01st Jan 2019 following the cut-off point for qualification to the ICC World T20 2020 on 31st Dec 2018. Rankings for women and men will be introduced in Oct 2018 and May 2019 respectively. The only exception was made for ACC Women’s Asia Cup matches, where all matches involving Malaysia Women and Thailand Women were also awarded T20I status.
“We are committed to growing the game and T20 is the vehicle through which we’ll do this,” said ICC Chief Executive David Richardson.
Hence, there still remains doubts about the minimum playing conditions required to host matches with T20I status and also, it might depend on the host Cricket Board to decide if they want matches to be counted as official T20I’s and count towards rankings. Since, hosting official T20I status matches will incur more expenses for the host Cricket Board, the decision could be entirely theirs to decide.
Botswana Cricket Association got the approval from ICC to host the 7-nation Women’s T20I tournament, to be held in Aug 2018 and are being played at Artificial pitches and hence, could be assumed that Artificial pitches with minimum ground size requirements will be allowed to host matches with status if seeked permission for.
