Barbados among possible venues to host T20 World Cup final

by Rawle Toney

Even as the ICC Venue Inspection team tours the nine host venues for next year’s T20 World Cup, the location for the finals remains unconfirmed.

Initially, Kensington Oval, renowned for hosting the 2007 World Cup final between Australia and Sri Lanka and the 2010 T20 World Cup final featuring Australia and England, was considered a likely venue for the 2024 tournament finals.

However, Cricket West Indies, through its Chief Executive Officer, Johnny Grave, and President Dr Kishore Shallow, had refuted any premature announcements, asserting that only the ICC can officially disclose the location of the finals.

KJ Singh, a member of the ICC’s Inspection team which toured Kensington Oval today, today admitted that Barbados, among other countries, is earmarked to host the finals.

“Since we don’t have a finalized match schedule, we will be releasing that in a few weeks as soon as the schedule is finalised,” Singh stated.

He acknowledged that Dominica’s withdrawal as a host nation caused some delays in releasing the match schedule, but assured that an announcement is imminent as the event date approaches.

The June 4 – 30 event marks the second instalment of the cricket showpiece in the region and the USA’s inaugural hosting of a major ICC tournament.

The 2024 T20 World Cup initiates the first of eight men’s global events in the ICC’s next commercial cycle from 2024-31, finalised in 2021.

Departing from tradition, the new format introduces excitement by having 20 teams initially play in four groups of five for the first round, with the top two teams from each group progressing to the Super 8s.

The Super-8 teams will then be split into two groups of four, and the top two in each group will advance to the semi-finals. (RT)