The ICC announced on Thursday that the next women's T20 World Cup, originally scheduled to be held in South Africa in November 2022, has been postponed to February 2023. Therefore only two multi-team major women's events will be played in 2022 - the ODI World Cup in New Zealand followed by the Commonwealth Games in July, with the multi-format Ashes scheduled for the latter half of the year.

According to an ICC release, the decision was made taking into consideration that there are "currently no major women's events scheduled to take place in 2023, [so] the board confirmed the switch for the T20 World Cup to better support player preparation and to continue to build the momentum around the women's game beyond 2022.

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Speaking on the development, ICC CEO Manu Sawhney said: "Moving the ICC Women's T20 World Cup to 2023 makes perfect sense on a number of levels. Firstly, it will provide a better workload balance for players giving them the best possible opportunity to perform to the highest levels on a global stage. Secondly, we can continue to build the momentum around the women's game through 2022 and into 2023. We are committed to fueling the growth of the women's game and today's decision enables us to do that over the longer term."

In August, the ICC had announced that the 2021 women's ODI World Cup, originally scheduled for February-March 2021 in New Zealand, was deferred by a year, with an eye on maintaining the "integrity of the tournament" in the wake of the disparity in the level of preparedness of the teams caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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