Sri Lanka lost the Champions Trophy they were hosting, and the rankings say their place goes with it
The ICC is moving the inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy out of Sri Lanka over government control of the board. India is the name being mentioned as the replacement host.
Aug 30, 2026
Sri Lanka were due to host the first ICC Women’s Champions Trophy in February 2027. They will not be hosting it, and on the rankings as they stand they will not be playing in it either.
The Sunday Times in Colombo reported on Sunday, 30 August that the ICC has moved the six-team tournament out of the country over the government’s involvement in running Sri Lanka Cricket. Prakash Shaffter, secretary of the SLC Transformation Committee, confirmed it to the paper. “Yes, it has been moved out of Sri Lanka,” he said, adding that he did not yet know where it would be played instead. A new host is expected to be settled at the next ICC Board meeting, and India is the name being mentioned most often.
The ICC has not announced any of this publicly yet.
The governance problem behind it
Sri Lanka Cricket is currently run by a Transformation Committee the government appointed to overhaul the board, including its constitution. The ICC has a standing objection to governments running its members’ cricket boards, and it has not let SLC representatives sit in on Board meetings since the committee took over. It has been asking for elections for months.
Sri Lanka have been here before. The ICC suspended SLC in 2023 over the same issue and stripped the country of the 2024 Under-19 Men’s World Cup, which went to South Africa instead. That one was a straight swap of venue. This one costs more, because a home tournament pays a board through ticketing, broadcast production and everything visiting teams, officials and travelling fans spend while they are there.
The bigger loss is the qualification slot
The Champions Trophy is a T20 event. Six teams, a round robin, top two into the final, played across a fortnight from 14 to 28 February. The window itself was already shifted once, from June and July into February, in a change reported in June this year.
Qualification is the top five in the ICC women’s T20I rankings plus the host. Sri Lanka were never going to make that on merit and did not need to, because they had the sixth spot as hosts. Look at the table published on Sunday, 30 August and the problem is obvious: Australia, England, India, New Zealand and South Africa fill the top five, West Indies are sixth on 237 rating points, and Sri Lanka are seventh on the same 237. Decimal places are keeping them out.
Take the hosting away and there is no obvious route back in. If India do get it, India are already third, so the sixth place would fall to the next team on the list, and that is West Indies rather than Sri Lanka. Six months is not much time to climb a place, and rating points that close do not move quickly.
Awkward timing
All of this landed while the Sri Lanka women’s team is in Dubai defending its Asia Cup title. They opened with a nine-wicket win over UAE on Saturday, bowling them out for 79, with Vimukthi and Ayodhya taking three wickets each and Chamari Athapaththu finishing it off with 48 not out.
That is the frustrating part. The team is playing well and the board is the reason a home tournament has gone. Sri Lanka last staged a women’s ICC event in 2012, and February was supposed to be the return.