The ICC keeps staging major events in countries where cricket already thrives, cycling through India, England, and Australia while its growth mandate goes unmet.
Hosting the Women's T20 World Cup in England and calling it a step toward growing the game is a bit like selling biryani in Mumbai and announcing you've done a great job spreading biryani around the world. The logic doesn't hold. England is the home of cricket. The fans are already there. The infrastructure is already there. Nothing new is being built.
The ICC has a stated mandate to grow cricket globally, but its major event calendar keeps cycling through the same handful of countries: India, England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, Australia. The same grounds, the same broadcasters, the same audiences. There's a reason for it, and it's not a secret. Once you've hosted a tournament in a country, the second one is easier to organize. The third practically runs itself. Familiarity reduces friction, and friction is expensive. So the path of least resistance keeps looping back to the same destinations.
"It's like trying to sell biryani in Mumbai and then saying we've done a great job spreading biryani in Mumbai."
The problem is that the mandate isn't to make event logistics easier. It's to grow the game. Those two things are pulling in opposite directions right now, and the ICC keeps choosing the easier one.
Non-traditional markets don't develop themselves. They develop because the sport shows up, invests attention, and gives local audiences a reason to care. A major ICC event, men's or women's, held somewhere cricket hasn't historically had a foothold does more for long-term growth than another tournament in a country where the sport is already woven into the culture.
The game doesn't grow where it's already grown.
The mechanics here are straightforward: you take the event to the audience you want to build, not the audience you already have. If cricket genuinely wants to expand its global footprint, the ICC needs to resist the pull of the easy option and start treating non-traditional countries as real venues for major tournaments, not just warm-up destinations or associate-member afterthoughts.
Both the men's and women's sides of the game deserve that investment. Hosting the women's T20 World Cup in England, where cricket already has deep roots, isn't a growth move. It's a maintenance move dressed up as ambition. The next cycle of major events is an opportunity to do something different. Whether the ICC takes it is another question entirely.
