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The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced that the postponed Men's T20 World Cup 2020, due to have taken place in Australia, will now take place in the country in 2022.

The tournament was to have been held in October and November, but has now been moved back two years while India’s hosting of the Men's T20 World Cup 2021, due to take place during October and November next year, will go ahead as scheduled.

Meanwhile, the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2021, a 50-over tournament due to take place in February and March 2021, has been postponed to February and March 2022 because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The decisions were taken by the IBC, the commercial arm of the ICC, following a "contingency planning exercise" which looked at the impact of Coronavirus around the world.

Explaining the schedule changes, ICC acting Chairman Imran Khwaja stated “over the last few months as we have considered how we return to staging global events, our number one priority has been to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in ICC events.

"The decisions the Board have taken today are in the best interests of the sport, our partners and importantly our fans.

"I’d like to thank our partners at the Board of Cricket Control in India, Cricket Australia and Cricket New Zealand as well as the Australian and New Zealand Governments for their continued support and commitment to a safe return to ICC events."

ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney added “we now have absolute clarity on the future of ICC events enabling all of our members to focus on the rescheduling of lost international and domestic cricket.

"We will now proceed as planned with the Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 in India and host the 2022 edition in Australia.”

The change is likely to impact Cricket Australia and may lead to redundancies among the organising committee that had been working towards the original start date.

The format of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 will remain as it was for 2020 and all teams that qualified for that event will now participate in India in 2021.

A new qualification process will be run for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022.

Meanwhile, the format of the postponed ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup will remain as it was for 2021.

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