"Keen to build on the success" of the recently concluded Women's World Cup, the ICC has agreed to expand the next edition of the tournament (2029) to ten teams. The ICC had announced the expansion of the women's game on International Women's Day back in 2021, and a recent release reaffirmed the board's "commitment to the growth of women's cricket" after the success of the 2025 edition.
Since 2000, only eight teams have featured in the main tournament of the Women's ODI World Cup. As compared to the 31 matches in the recent World Cup, the 2029 edition will have 10 teams playing 48 games.
The Women's T20 World Cup next year will also be expanded to 12 teams, up from the 10 that featured last year in the UAE.
"Nearly 300,000 fans watched the event in stadia breaking the record for tournament attendance for any women's Cricket event," the ICC release said. "The tournament also witnessed viewership growth and new records being set for on-screen audiences across the world with nearly 500 million viewers in India."
The ICC board also ratified the appointment of a number of members of the ICC Women's Cricket Committee, namely Ashley De Silva, Mithali Raj, Amol Muzumdar, Ben Sawyer, Charlotte Edwards, and Sala Stella Siale-Vaea.
Cricket at the LA 2028 Olympics and Brisbane 2032
The Board also revealed that the Olympics event in Los Angeles in 2028 will have 28 games in total, across both the men's and women's competitions. The six teams in each competition will comprise the top-ranked side from each of the five regions (Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania), including the hosts USA. The sixth team will be identified through a qualifier, for which details are not currently known. The events, as reported earlier, will begin on July 12 and be played at the purpose-built Fairgrounds Stadium, around 50km outside of Los Angeles.
Before then, cricket will also feature in multi-sport games at the Asian Games in 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, the African Games in Cairo, Egypt, in 2027 as well as the PanAm Games in Lima, Peru, in 2027.
Talks have also begun on cricket's inclusion for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, Australia. Sanjog Gupta, the ICC CEO, is believed to have told members at the meeting that he held "meaningful discussions with Brisbane 2032 for cricket's inclusion in their program.
Along with the ICC chair Jay Shah, Gupta had meetings in Lausanne, Switzerland, recently with teams from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), LA28 and Brisbane 2032, where they discussed event delivery, competition formats and qualification scenarios.
ICC starts bids for mobile gaming
The ICC also confirmed that it will begin a bidding process for its mobile cricket game, which has been at the centre of tensions between the governing body and the World Cricketers' Association (WCA). "The ICC Board confirmed its approval to issue an Invitation to Tender (ITT) for Video Gaming Rights, opening the door for leading global partners to collaborate with the ICC in delivering world-class, digital fan experiences," the board said in the statement.
The dispute between the ICC and the WCA centred over NIL (Name, Image and Likeliness) rights of the players, with the latter claiming any move by the ICC to develop a game featuring players would be in breach of a contract. The ICC decided earlier this year that member boards would deal directly with players over NIL rights, rather than with the WCA who have those rights to about 600 players and have already entered the gaming market. The ICC had launched an Expression of Interest process in June, but it has taken time for boards to negotiate those rights with their players. It isn't clear yet exactly how many boards have secured the rights, though one estimate is that at least half of the Full Members have.