With just days to go before the 2022 Women’s Cricket World Cup, ICC CEO Geoff Allardice spoke about the nine-player rule for the tournament. On February 24, ICC announced that teams will be able to field nine players if their World Cup roster is affected by COVID-19, as well as two female substitutes within their management team (if available) in a non-batting, non-bowling capacity.
About the new rule, according to ICC’s website, Allardice said: “I hope it doesn’t apply. It’s something we’ve had to do in recent months since the Omicron outbreak,” he said. “At nearly all of our tournaments, we have had to deal with players who were unavailable due to isolation for positive Covid tests.”
“And I think one of the shifts is that we had a pretty close call in the West Indies during the Under-19 World Cup, where there were some teams with outbreaks, and we had to have some contingency plans in place. The bottom line is that we want 11 against 11, we have squads of 15. I think all teams travel with some extra reserve players and an unforeseen event.”
“Fingers crossed, we don’t have to get close to it, but the principle is that it’s the World Cup matches and they’re 11 against 11. I hope every game takes place as planned without interruptions, but there could be situations where a team has less than 11 players available, and we needed some protocols to deal with that,” he added.
The 2022 ICC Women’s World Cup was supposed to be played in 2021 but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. Qualifying for the tournament, in Zimbabwe last November, also had to be cut midway through the rise of the Omicron variant – hosting a tournament during a pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for the ICC.
There are also restrictions imposed by host country governments – in New Zealand, stadiums will only have partial capacity during the World Cup. It’s something the ICC CEO hoped would change in the second half of the tournament.
promoted
“The discussion with the government is ongoing. At the moment there are some restrictions on the number of people who can attend the matches, but we are hopeful that as the situation in New Zealand develops we may be able to get a higher capacity in the stadiums in the second half of the tournament,” he added.
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