ICC Meet: India retains 2021 World T20 hosting rights, Australia gets 2022; Women's WC now in 2022
Dubai: India on Friday retained the right to host the 2021 T20 World Cup while Australia will conduct this year's postponed edition in 2022, the ICC announced after its board meeting, straightening out a schedule that went topsy-turvy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year's edition had to bee postponed because of the raging pandemic, which has severely impacted all sports calendars globally.
"The International Cricket Council (ICC) today confirmed that the T20 World Cup 2020 that was postponed due to COVID-19 will be held in Australia in 2022. India will host the T20 World Cup 2021 as planned," the ICC stated in a press release.
The global body also confirmed that next year's women's ODI World Cup in New Zealand has been postponed until February-March 2022 because of the impact the pandemic has had on cricket globally.
ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney said: "We now have absolute clarity on the future of ICC events enabling all of our Members to focus on the rescheduling of lost international and domestic cricket.
"We will now proceed as planned with the Men's T20 World Cup 2021 in India and host the 2022 edition in Australia."
The format of the 2021 T20 World Cup will remain as it was for 2020 and all teams that qualified for that event will now participate in India in 2021.
A new qualification process will be started for the 2022 edition in Australia.
That India will host the 2021 edition and Australian edition will be pushed to 2022 was reported by PTI on May 7.
"BCCI were never keen to host the 2022 event which would have meant that they had to host back to back ICC events including the 50-over World Cup in 2023. That wasn't a viable option," an ICC Board member told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
However, it was a big setback for the women's game with the much-awaited World Cup being pushed by a year.
Sawhney said the decision would "give players from every competing nation, the best opportunity to be ready for the world's biggest stage and there is still a global qualifier to complete to decide the final three teams.
An ICC Board member said that due to various countries facing different situations with regards to the COVID case load, it would have been difficult to hold the qualifiers in time.
The postponement also raises doubts about the future of India legends such as Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, who probably would have played their last ICC tournament in 2021.
The decisions were taken by the IBC (the commercial subsidiary of the ICC) following an extensive contingency planning exercise which took into account the health, cricket and commercial impact of COVID-19 around the world.
The format of the postponed World Cup will remain as it was for 2021. Five teams have already qualified for the event and that will stand for 2022.
The original global qualification event to determine the final three teams to contest the event was scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in July this year, but was postponed due to COVID-19.
The qualification event will now be held in 2021.
"There has been no women's international cricket played since the conclusion of the women's T20 World Cup earlier this year and due to the varying impact of COVID-19 globally that is likely to remain the situation for a number of the teams," Sawhney spoke about the impact of the pandemic.
"Moving the event by 12 months gives all competing teams the chance to play a sufficient level of cricket...so the integrity of the tournament is maintained."
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Google fires over 20 more employees over protest against contract with Israeli govt
San Francisco, Apr 23: Google fired at least 20 more workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, bringing the total number of terminated staff to more than 50, a group representing the workers said.
It's the latest sign of internal turmoil at the tech giant centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
Workers held sit-in protests last week at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. The company responded by calling the police, who made arrests.
The group organizing the protests, No Tech For Apartheid, said the company fired 30 workers last week — higher than the initial 28 they had announced.
Then, on Tuesday night, Google fired “over 20” more staffers, “including non-participating bystanders during last week's protests,” said Jane Chung, a spokeswoman for No Tech For Apartheid, without providing a more specific number.
“Google's aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” Chung said in a press release. “In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers.”
Google said it fired the additional workers after its investigation gathered details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and it identified employees who used masks and didn't carry their staff badges to hide their identities. It didn't specify how many were fired.
The company disputed the group's claims, saying that it carefully confirmed that “every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings.”
The Mountain View, California, company had previously signalled that more people could be fired, with CEO Sundar Pichai indicating in a blog post that employees would be on a short leash as the company intensifies its efforts to improve its AI technology.
