Sri Lanka to co-host 2026 T20 World Cup, USA gets first major ICC event

Sri Lanka will co-host the 2026 T20 World Cup with India, while the United States will stage its first major cricket tournament in 2024, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced yesterday.

The baseball-loving country, which has never appeared at either a T20 or a 50-over World Cup, will host the event along with the more established cricket nations of the West Indies. Cricket in America was strong in the 19th century when teams from England would tour but was largely neglected following the rise of baseball, often described as the national game of the USA.

The West Indies, who have twice won the T20 World Cup, began playing international matches at Central Broward Park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2012. The ICC announced a slew of hosts for all of their men’s white-ball events up to 2031. Pakistan, which has been starved of international cricket recently owing to security reasons, is slated to host the 50-over Champions Trophy in 2025. It will be the first major global cricket tournament played in Pakistan since 1996 when it hosted the men’s ODI World Cup alongside India and Sri Lanka. Namibia, who reached the Super 12 stage in their first ever T20 tournament at the most recent edition in UAE, will also be firsttime hosts when they share the 2027 ODI World Cup with South Africa and Zimbabwe, who last co-hosted the event in 2003. Ireland and Scotland were also named as co-hosts of the 2030 T20 World Cup alongside England. -Agencies