ISLAMABAD: The Champions Trophy 2025 saga is likely to come to an end in the coming week with reports stating that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and International Cricket Council (ICC) have come to a likely agreement regarding the hosting rights of the tournament.
According to reports by ESPNCricinfo, PCB and ICC have an in-principle agreement and have agreed to a workable solution for the Champions Trophy 2025 scheduling. According to reports, the Pakistan vs India and all the other India matches in the tournament will take place in Dubai instead of Lahore, while Pakistan will also not travel to India for all the ICC held tournaments until at least 2027.
This move would mean that both the countries will play their matches at neutral venues instead of playing them in each other’s countries.
According to the ICC tournament schedule, India will be the hosts of the Women’s ODI World Cup in 2025 and the men’s T20 World Cup in 2026, which is being co-hosted alongside Sri Lanka. However, it is unclear whether this agreement is in place for the women’s tournaments as well.
While the workable Hybrid model makes sense on paper, it does feel like that Pakistan is hard done by due to the fact that the 2026 women’s T20 World Cup was already being co-hosted by two countries, which effectively means that the Men in Green will travel to Sri Lanka instead of India.
Although, the agreement has not been finalized yet and it is likely to become official on 7 December during ICC’s board meeting. The meeting was set to take place today, but was postponed at the last minute.
The Champions Trophy 2025 is scheduled to commence on 19 February, with Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi as the initial venues. Now the tournament will have a fourth venue as well with India’s matches likely taking place in Dubai.
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