AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE fate of 2020 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifiers will be determined when Cricket chiefs will meet this week to discuss the future of some of the sport’s biggest events.
Tomorrow’s conference call will bring together the chief executives of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) 12 full member nations and three associate representatives.
They will try to find a way through the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Tanzania national cricket team is lined up to compete in the 2020 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifiers, which has since been suspended due to the pandemic, which is ravaging almost the entire World.
The Tanzania Cricket Association (TCA) is still waiting for communication from the ICC, regarding the fate of qualifiers.
The qualification event was scheduled to be staged in South Africa from April 25th to May 4th this year but due to the current coronavirus outbreak the ICC announce postponement of the event.
The Africa Qualifier will have two sub-regional groups, with the top two teams in each group progressing to the Regional final.
Kenya and Nigeria, the two highest ranked teams as of 1st January 2020, progressed directly to the Regional final.
Tanzania is placed in group A alongside Mozambique, Botswana, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and St.Helena, while group B teams are Uganda, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Seychelles and eSwatini.
The virus could also threaten this year’s T20 World Cup in Australia, meant to start on 18th October.
And next year’s inaugural World Test Championship final at Lord’s may have to be delayed if countries are unable to play their scheduled qualifying matches.
ICC chief executive Manu Sawhney said the meeting would be the first step in a “collective process”.
“We need to share knowledge and start to build a deep understanding of what it will take to resume international cricket,” he said.
“Countries will start to reopen at different stages and in different ways and we will need to respect that and have a holistic view of this to enable us to take well-informed decisions that mitigate the various risks as much as possible.”
Prior to the postponement of the Africa qualifiers, Tanzania team camped in Harare, Zimbabwe for one week to prepare for the event.
Team Head Coach Steve Tikolo expressed his mixed feelings on the postponement of the competition but said it was an important move to protect everyone from the deadly scourge.
“This is a welcome move going by the health crisis caused globally by the corona pandemic. We thank the ICC for this move as the health and safety of the players and participants comes first.”
“As a team, our preparations for the tournament were on the right track having just returned back home from a practice tour to Zimbabwe.
We will now have to reassess the situation and come up with a new preparations/training plan once everything is clear regarding the rescheduled dates of the tournament.”
At the moment, players are training individually and they have been given specific training programmes, according to the association’s Information Officer, Atif Salim.
