The 2024 men’s Under-19 World Cup has been moved out of Sri Lanka after the International Cricket Council (ICC) board on Tuesday confirmed the suspension of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) for breaching its obligations as a member in particular the requirement to manage its affairs autonomously and without government interference.
The development will however, have no immediate implication on the daily running of cricket or on Sri Lanka’s participation in bilateral and ICC tournaments.
“After hearing representation from SLC, the ICC Board decided that Sri Lanka can continue to compete internationally both in bilateral cricket and ICC events. However, funding to SLC will be controlled by the ICC and the ICC Board confirmed Sri Lanka will no longer host the ICC U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup 2024, which will now be held in South Africa,” read a statement from the global body.
India, with five titles, are the most successful team in the competition’s history, followed by Australia with three. Pakistan have won twice and each of England, Bangladesh, South Africa, and West Indies have lifted the crown once.
The Chief Executives’ Committed (CEC) that met in Ahmedabad on Tuesday, also decided to introduce a stop clock on trial basis to assess the time consumed by teams between overs and penalize the ones falling to stick to the allotted time of 60 seconds in both ODI and T20Is.
“The CEC agreed to introduce a stop clock on a trial basis in men’s ODI and T20I cricket from December 2023 to April 2024. The clock will be used to regulate the amount of time taken between overs. If the bowling team is not ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed, a 5-run penalty will be imposed the third time it happens in an innings,” it said.
The ICC Board also approved new gender eligibility regulations for the international game following a 9-month consultation process with the sport’s stakeholders.
“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” the statement said.
“The review, which was led by the ICC Medical Advisory Committee chaired by Dr Peter Harcourt, relates solely to gender eligibility for international women’s cricket, whilst gender eligibility at domestic level is a matter for each individual Member Board, which may be impacted by local legislation. The regulations will be reviewed within two years.”
ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said that the decision was taken as the global cricket body is committed to protect the integrity of the game.
“The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and is founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players,” Allardice said.