Reports | Bangladesh front runners to host 2021 Women's U19 World Cup

All the noise around the ICC’s 2023-2031 cycle of its Future Tours Programme (FTP) has been about the proposal of increasing the number of men’s tournaments. In the meantime, the committee has quietly gone about strengthening the women’s game as well, with the U19 World Cup for women being preponed to 2021. 

“In its last board meeting, ICC had approved four U-19 Women’s World Cups in the 2023-31 cycle. But now it wants to start the tournament in 2021. The bidding process for hosting rights was due to start in early 2020,” a source in the ICC told TOI. 

Though the men’s U19 World Cup is played in the 50-over format, it is more likely that the women’s edition takes a T20 route. At present, most countries, including India, just do not have a system robust enough to groom women cricketers at that level. 

“The idea of the tournament is to promote the game worldwide. There are more chances of playing it in the T20 format because more people tend to play that. Establishing the U-19 Women’s World Cup is aimed at improving the pathway for young cricketers and an effort to bring about parity, in terms of opportunities, with men’s cricket,” the source added.

The BCCI, for one, had started U-19 zonal camps in 2018 and has been targeting girls as young as 16 to play at the level to strengthen the pool of players available.