Sri Lanka losing the hosting rights has added to the chaos around the inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy, further highlighting the wider lack of planning around women’s ICC tournaments, writes Katya Witney.

The inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy has been an organisational shambles. In 2021, the ICC announced a revival of the men’s Champions Trophy, which had been discontinued after 2017. The following year, a women’s T20I version of the tournament was launched, as part of the ICC’s expansion of women’s global tournaments.

Sri Lanka were announced as hosts, marking the first time their governing body SLC were given sole hosting rights to a women’s ICC tournament since 2012. However, no further update on the qualification process or tournament schedule was given until June this year, five years after the initial launch, when the ICC brought forward the competition by four months, to start in February 2027, not June.

No reason was given for the change, although its original window would likely have had its final played in close proximity to the start of the Ashes series in England. Nevertheless, moving the tournament with such short notice meant that Australia’s February-March series against New Zealand had to be moved. England were also due to play Sri Lanka in late February in three ODIs, part of the Women’s Championship, as well as an adjoining T20I series. The ECB and SLC are now in talks to move that series as well.

Eight months ahead of the scheduled start of the tournament, the ICC finally announced the qualifying pathway in June. The top five teams in the ICC T20I rankings as of July 6, would make up the tournament, with hosts Sri Lanka as the sixth team.

A six-team tournament model is a difficult one to pull off without inconsistencies. At the time of the announcement, Sri Lanka were seventh in the ICC T20I rankings, below the West Indies. In the same week that the qualification pathway was announced, West Indies beat Sri Lanka and New Zealand in the T20 World Cup and qualified for the semi-finals.

In the event of the July 6 cut-off, Sri Lanka overtook West Indies by a single ratings point following wins over Ireland and Scotland. Those two wins have now taken on increased importance after SLC were stripped of hosting rights this week. Had Sri Lanka stayed in seventh place on the ICC rankings, they would have only qualified for the tournament as the host nation, along with the top five ranked teams. No longer hosts, but having just squeaked past the West Indies in the rankings, they will be the sixth team at the tournament in India.

The decision to move the tournament out of Sri Lanka stems from the precarious position SLC is currently in. In April this year, a Transformation Committee was appointed to run SLC by the Sri Lankan government, after it ousted the previous board. The committee includes Kumar Sangakkara and is primarily in place to overhaul SLC’s governance framework and implement a new constitution. It has not yet held elections to vote in board members, with SLC’s electoral processes still suspended by the government until the board’s constitution is voted through by parliament.

The ICC does not recognise politically appointed administrations, meaning that SLC representatives have not been at ICC board meetings since the Transformation Committee was appointed earlier this year. Historically, SLC has suffered government interference, which has affected its relationship with the ICC. In 2023, the now-ousted president of SLC, Shammi Silva, requested that the ICC suspend the board over government interference. In 2015, when the Sri Lanka government had previously implemented an interim committee, the ICC reduced SLC to observer status at board meetings and withheld its funds until elections were held.

While there is a certain absurdity to the ICC refusing hosting rights based on government interference, given the broad spectrum of political intervention it does allow, there is some consistency here. They have repeatedly requested SLC hold elections, most recently at the ICC conference in July this year. Nevertheless, the broader question remains: how much more can the number of boards allowed to host international tournaments shrink?

In their press release announcing India as the new hosts, the ICC stated that Bangladesh and South Africa had also been evaluated against “their established host evaluation criteria” – which takes into account infrastructure, facilities and fanbase among others. Shockingly, India won out with a plan to host the tournaments between two stadiums, Mumbai and Vadodara. While the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai is an established venue for women’s internationals, Vadodara last hosted a women’s T20I in 2013. The proximity to the end of the WPL, alongside Indian domestic cricket and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy means that venues will have been hard to come by at short notice.

Even without the organisational problems with this particular tournament, it’s not unusual for ICC tournament schedules over the last five years to be announced haphazardly. The 2023 men’s 50-over World Cup schedule was released with 45 days' notice. Tickets for last year’s women’s World Cup in India went on sale less than a month before the start. In the last men’s Champions Trophy in 2025, the ICC missed their contractual deadline to announce the schedule by over a month. The women’s T20 World Cup earlier this year was an outlier in having tickets on sale over a year in advance.

Nevertheless, women’s tournaments are consistently short-changed by a lack of forward planning. Pakistan were named as hosts for the 2028 women’s T20 World Cup less than three months ago. Apart from the Champions Trophy, that is the only ICC women’s tournament in the next five years that the host country has been announced for. Meanwhile, all men’s tournament hosts have been locked in until 2031. Tie in the delayed announcement of the qualification process for the Champions Trophy, and the picture shows women’s tournaments being treated as an afterthought.

The ICC press release announcing India as the hosts included a statement from Jay Shah, part of which read: “With a marquee ICC women’s event now taking place every year, we have a significant opportunity to build greater momentum, provide more consistency and create a stronger rhythm for the women’s game, its players and its fans around the world."

Greater momentum, consistency and rhythm for the women’s game will only happen if players and fans know where they’ll be playing next.

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