The much-delayed ICC (International Cricket Council) Men's T20 World Cup, originally scheduled in Australia from 18th October to 15th November 2020 was canceled as a result of COVID-19 situation worldwide and shifted to India replacing the to-be-held Champions Trophy in 2021 and was again shifted to Oman and United Arab Emirates (UAE) because of the worsening pandemic situation in India, finally began on 17th October 2021. This is only the official beginning, because for the very first five days until 22nd October the fixtures only figure teams to qualify for the Super-12 that begins from 23rd October. The ICC has additionally earlier made a decision to merge the Champions Trophy (last played in 2018) with the T20 World Cup and which means that there is a back-to-back T20 World Cups in 2010 and in 2022 also.
The ICC has increased the amount of participating teams from 10 in the 2019 version to 16 this time around, giving participatory status to 104 countries; this expansion plan of the ICC will be viewed in light of popularizing this format worldwide and building a strong claim for this cricket format to be contained in the Olympics-2028 in Los Angeles from 21st July. This T20 format, the shortest of the overall game, is regarded as being suitable for the Olympics schedule. From the 16 teams in ICC Men's T20 World Cup-2021, 8 teams have qualified directly and the rest of the 8 teams are divided into Group-A and Group-B, each number of 4 teams would play matches on a round-robin basis and the most effective two teams from each group will join the Super-12. All 16 teams have been selected on the basis of the ICC rankings with sole exception Oman which has earned its place by being among the hosts. In the Group-B double-header played on the very first day Papua New Guinea defeated Oman and a listless Bangladesh had to succumb to a spirited Scotland, both matches played in Muscat, Oman.
We are giving the stage-wise break-up of the teams below which explains the format of the tournament too:
Stage Group Teams
Round 1 : Group A Sri Lanka, Ireland, the Netherlands and Namibia
Round 1 : Group B Bangladesh, Scotland, Papua New Guinea and Oman
Super 12 : Group 1 England, Australia, South Africa, West Indies, A1 and B2
Super 12 : Group 2 India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Afghanistan, A2 and B1
This leads with a confusion in reading the image on the top, taken from the ICC website, where semi-finals are shown as between A1 Vs B2 and A2 Vs B1 that actually refers to the most effective two teams in Super-12 stage from Group-1 and Group-2 respectively. In effect you will find four groups in the World Cup, each group teams playing one another on round-robin basis and after the very first stage of four emerging qualifier teams the Super-12 groups can also be deemed as Group-A and Group-B.
The normal format of the World Cup makes the gaps involving the matches of your chosen teams stretch up to and including week. As an example, India after playing Pakistan on 24th October in its first match plays its second match only on 31st October against New Zealand. In every, India play just five matches ahead of the semi-final knockout stage which is disappointing for the cricket lovers and fans: some major competitive teams never get to play against one another at all through the entire tournament. Because of this,T20 Cricket World Cup 2022 Schedule I've been maintaining the need for the ICC to change the format of World Cups, let it be the one-day Cup or the T20 Cup from Group-wise round-robin only to making the entire of Super-12 to be played on round-robin basis that'd make the tournament tougher and more competitive. Needless to say, it'd take higher than a month, but some critics say that the present time frame of approximately monthly is too much time for the limited quantity of matches. The World Cup T20 has pretty much started following a Indian Premiere League (IPL) style and glamour indices, however not following the fundamental format of competition. Needless to say, not as much as 14 times, but all the 12 teams in the Super stage must be allowed to play one another one or more times in one-day format and twice in T20 format.
However, your competitors should indeed be likely to be tough with every team-nation attempting to win the title because of their fans, and the defending Champions the West Indies would definitely try to win it again, in addition to the tough ones like India, Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa, and the dark horses just like the unpredictable Pakistan or Bangladesh or Afghanistan and the like. As has been proved on numerous instances anything sometimes happens in those three-to-four-hour games just like the twists and turns in suspense/thriller movies. From the IPL-2021 experience it emerges that spinners may get the advantage as a result of the rather sluggish pitches of UAE, particularly Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
Chinmay Chakravarty is a cricket lover since his childhood days and played the overall game at school level and later for social enjoyment. After completing education he started writing on cricket--most on the aspects and games of Indian Cricket. He was an officer of Indian Information Service and superannuated from the post of Director, Press Information Bureau, Kolkata in November, 2019. he Published his first solo book 'Laugh and Let Laugh' in 2017 and his second book 'The Cheerless Chauffeur and Other Tales' in 2021.
