Broadcasters, who have made significant amounts of investments for the forthcoming media rights cycle, were unable to stop the International Cricket Council (ICC) from hosting the 2024 T20 World in the USA, where hosting the first-class games even seems to be challenging at the moment.
A record 20 teams will fight it out for the World Cup. The eight top-performing teams at the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia alongside hosts USA and West Indies will automatically qualify for the 2024 edition of the marquee tournament.
The format for the next World Cup will be different from the last two editions, as the 20 teams will be divided into four groups with five teams each of which two teams qualify for the Super 8 stage. The Super teams will further split into two groups as the teams will play each other once, with the top two teams making it into the semifinal of the mega event.
Florida’s Fort Lauderhill ground, which had hosted a few India versus West Indies T20 games last year would remain an obvious choice of the venue alongside Morrisville, Dallas, and New York being the other options to host the matches.
It was a historic moment for the USA which is still trying to establish a cricket culture in its sporting ecosystem despite being the first country to be accorded the status of an associate member of the ICC decades ago. The talk around the USA’s lack of readiness for the 2024 T20 World Cup is intensifying, and the region’s inadequate infrastructure remains a source of concern.
“The Van Cortlandt Park plan is running into a lot of troubles and it wouldn’t make any sense to risk that big a match at a makeshift venue. A venue team is already inspecting more open fields in the area but nothing is certain yet as far as the venue in New York is concerned,” says an ICC official.
According to the reports in Cricketnext, the International Cricket Council (ICC) aims to have 17 of the event’s matches in the United States alone but the idea is not well-received by stakeholders with the infrastructure it currently holds. The ICC’s priority was to host the high-profile India-Pakistan match in New York City, but the Van Cortlandt Park proposal encountered significant difficulties in hosting the games in the nation.