All eyes will be on the draws for the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 which is to take place in Oman today. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Sourav Ganguly, as well as board secretary Jay Shah, will be in Oman at the event where the draw is set to take place.
The ceremony is expected to kick off at 3:30 PM. The BCCI duo will be accompanied by ICC officials at the event. The event will only see the draws of the T20 World Cup being revealed while the exact match schedule will be announced in a week’s time.
All eyes will be on the groups in which India and Pakistan — two arch-rivals — get drawn, especially since they do not play against each other in bilateral contests anymore.
It also has to be noted that the first round of the tournament is likely to see the qualifying event take place where four of the eight teams will book their progression to the main event. A total of 8 teams have already qualified for the main round while 4 more will join them from the qualifiers, making it a total of 12.
The eight teams vying for a spot in the main round are: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland, Namibia, Oman, and Papua New Guinea.
The T20 World Cup is set to begin on September 17 in UAE and Oman but will be organised by the BCCI. The event was earlier supposed to take place in India but the suspension of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 midway through the season a few months ago forced the board to change the venue.
Although the Covid-19 situation in India is fairly under control at present, the third wave of the virus is expected to hit the country in September-October. With the T20 World Cup also scheduled to take place around that time, the decision to host the event in India was deemed too risky.
