India get the first Women’s Champions Trophy, and Sri Lanka keep their place by one rating point

The ICC Board signed it off on Wednesday. The first Women’s Champions Trophy, a six-team T20 tournament that Sri Lanka were supposed to stage, will be played in India from 14 to 28 February 2027, split between the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai and the Vadodara International Cricket Stadium.

Sri Lanka lost it over governance. They have not lost their place in it, and that is down to a single rating point banked back in July.

Why the tournament moved

Sri Lanka Cricket is being run by a Transformation Committee the government appointed to rewrite its constitution and overhaul the board. The ICC does not allow governments to run its members’ boards, and it has been asking for elections for months. Its line on Wednesday was that Sri Lanka Cricket “continues to make the requisite reforms outlined at the ICC’s Annual Conference in July”, which is a polite way of saying the reforms are not finished.

The report that the event was being moved came first, in the Colombo press on Sunday 30 August, before the ICC had said anything publicly. Wednesday’s board meeting turned it into a decision. Bangladesh and South Africa were both assessed against the ICC’s hosting criteria alongside India before the vote went India’s way.

This is the second time since 2023 that Sri Lanka have lost an ICC event this way. The 2024 Under-19 Men’s World Cup was taken off them in November 2023, while the board was under a full ICC suspension, and handed to South Africa.

The one point that saved Sri Lanka’s place

Here is where it gets close. The six teams were set off the ICC women’s T20I team rankings as they stood on 6 July, the day after Australia beat England in the T20 World Cup final. That table read Australia 291, England 276, India 262, New Zealand 249, South Africa 245, then Sri Lanka on 238 and West Indies on 237.

One point. Sri Lanka were sixth by one rating point on the day the field was frozen, and the field has not been unfrozen since. Australia, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka are the six going to Mumbai and Vadodara.

West Indies have since caught them. By the rankings published on Sunday 30 August, both sides sat on 237 and West Indies were ahead on the decimals. Two months earlier that would have been worth a tournament. Now it is worth nothing, because the cut-off had already passed.

What India get out of it

A February window is a good one for Indian cricket. It sits clear of the IPL and clear of the men’s international summer, and it gives the women’s team a home ICC event fifteen months after they won the 50-over World Cup at Navi Mumbai. The venues suggest a compact tournament rather than a national roadshow: the Cricket Club of India in south Mumbai, and Vadodara, whose 40,000-seat ground opened in December 2024 with an India versus West Indies women’s ODI series.

The format is simple. Six teams, one round robin of fifteen matches, then the top two meet in the final on 28 February. No semi-finals, so a bad afternoon in week one is expensive.

ICC chair Jay Shah framed the event as part of a wider push, saying a marquee women’s event every year gives the game “a significant opportunity to build greater momentum”. That is the actual point of the Champions Trophy in the women’s calendar. It fills the gap years between World Cups so the elite teams are not left playing bilateral series and nothing else.

What has not been announced

Match timings, the fixture list and ticketing have not been announced. Nor has anything about how the Mumbai and Vadodara legs will be split, which matters for anyone planning to travel: fifteen matches across a fortnight in two cities is a schedule that could be organised several different ways.

For Sri Lanka, the tournament they were going to open at home is now an away trip they scraped into. Their women are in Dubai defending the Asia Cup title while this plays out. The board still has elections to hold, and until that is settled the hosting question is not going away.

More cricket news from SportsAdda