The International Cricket Council (ICC) is planning to bring back the men’s Champions League Twenty20 tournament as early as September 2025, according to *The Sydney Morning Herald*. The idea received strong support at the ICC’s annual conference held in Singapore.
The original Champions League, which began in 2008 and ran till 2014, was scrapped after ESPN Star, who had invested \$1 billion for the broadcasting rights, decided to exit the deal. The league was originally supported by the BCCI, Cricket Australia, and Cricket South Africa. Interestingly, the funds from that broadcast deal played a key role in launching Australia’s successful Big Bash League.
However, with the global T20 calendar now flooded with various leagues and players often participating in four to five tournaments annually, scheduling and team selection for the new Champions League will be a significant hurdle. Revenue-sharing models are still being debated, while there’s also growing interest in another possible T20 tournament with backing from Saudi Arabia.
Test Cricket Under Review, Two-Division Format Discussed
The ICC is also debating major changes to Test cricket, including introducing a two-tier system. This move comes as only a few countries are currently able to make profits from the traditional format, while many lack the proper infrastructure and consistent team development systems. To address the imbalance, the ICC has set up a working group to redesign the global cricket calendar starting in 2027.
The group includes key figures such as Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg, ECB head Richard Gould, and ICC’s new CEO Sanjog Gupta. This group is expected to deliver preliminary findings to ICC chairman Jay Shah before the year ends. A decision regarding the two-division Test structure could come by the end of the year. The idea behind the format change is to protect the format’s relevance while acknowledging its limited appeal and financial challenges.
Sanjog Gupta on Cricket’s Future, “You Have to Make Hard Choices”
Sanjog Gupta, formerly the head of sport at JioStar and now ICC’s chief executive, has a strong focus on aligning cricket’s structure with market demands. Gupta had also contributed to a recent calendar report prepared by the global players’ association. “You have to make hard choices,” Gupta said on the MCC’s World Cricket Connects panel in 2023. “And there are very clear indicators of what fans want. There is enough data to suggest what direction the game is going in.”
He added, “If you continue to serve a product that no one wants, one – that product will continue to suffer; and, two – the ecosystem around the product will continue to suffer.” He compared the situation to the decline of Blackberry devices, saying, “It was a device that all of us had… then it disappeared, and it was replaced by another product.”
Get the latest cricket news here, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more such updates.
