Australia were first awarded the tournament in February 2015, with New Zealand expected to co-host. It would have been the first time that Australia would host the men's World Twenty20. The tournament was provisionally scheduled to be held from 18 October to 15 November 2020. Prior to the
2018 Women's World Twenty20 final, the ICC announced that the men's and women's World Twenty20 would be rebranded as the "T20 World Cup" beginning in 2020, as part of a goal to heighten its profile alongside the ICC's world championships for other formats (the
Cricket World Cup for
ODI, and
ICC World Test Championship). In April 2020, the ICC confirmed that despite the
COVID-19 pandemic, the tournament was still planned to go ahead as scheduled. However, the following month a senior ICC official said that it would be "too big a risk" to host the tournament in 2020, The ICC also stated that reports of postponing the tournament were inaccurate, with multiple contingency plans being looked at. A decision on the tournament was originally deferred until the ICC's meeting on 10 June 2020, with a further announcement scheduled to be made in July 2020. In June 2020, Earl Eddings, the chairman of
Cricket Australia, said that it was "unlikely" and "unrealistic" that the tournament would take place in Australia as scheduled. Eddings also suggested that Australia could host the event in October 2021, and India stage the tournament a year later in 2022. The ICC also considered moving the tournament to be played around the next
Women's Cricket World Cup, which was originally scheduled to take place in New Zealand for February 2021. A month before the official postponement, Australian federal tourism minister
Simon Birmingham announced that the Australian government expected that the country's borders would be closed to international travel until 2021. The ICC also confirmed that either Australia or India, the hosts for the tournaments originally scheduled to take place in 2020 and 2021 respectively, would host this tournament. In August 2020, the ICC confirmed that India are expected to host the 2021 tournament, with Australia expected to the
2022 tournament. In the same month, the ICC confirmed that Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates were being considered as back-up venues for the tournament. In April 2021, the ICC's CEO
Geoff Allardice confirmed that back-up plans were still in place if India were unable to host the tournament due to the pandemic. Later the same month, Dhiraj Malhotra of the
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) confirmed that the UAE would be used as a contingency, if the
pandemic in India continued to get worse. The BCCI were also in talks with Oman as a potential co-host of the tournament. On 1 June 2021, the ICC gave the BCCI the deadline of 28 June 2021 to make its decision on where the tournament would be played. Regardless of the actual location of the tournament, the ICC also confirmed that the BCCI would remain as the hosts of the competition. Later, the ICC confirmed that the tournament had been moved to the UAE and Oman. It was the first time for both the UAE and Oman to be hosting a global ICC event, and also the first occasion that a cricket World Cup was held entirely outside of the
Test-playing nations. Less than two weeks before the start of the tournament, Oman was impacted by
Cyclone Shaheen which passed only a few miles north of the tournament venue in Al-Amerat. Pankaj Khimji, chairman of
Oman Cricket, stated that "we were so close to being virtually wiped out [...] had this had happened over here in this area, I'd have said goodbye to the World Cup". == Teams and qualification ==