We miss you a lot (1998-2017)… ..

A small 50 over tournament, small because it has less no. Of matches as compared to the biggest cricket tournament..ICC cricket world cup. It lasts for nearly 2 weeks while the CWC lasts for over a month. This tournament was started to support and make a chance for the non- test playing nations, to have a crack with the test playing nations. It was kept small and compact with easy formats like round- Robin and knockouts so that it can’t take the place of the much famous and older CWC and become more popular than it. But although being considered as less important than world cup , it’s the second most difficult tournament in the cricket history. It’s often dubbed as the mini world cup.

It was started in 1998 in Bangladesh where the hosts themselves didn’t took part in the tournament and 12 nations participated then. The tournament was following the round robin format,in which the 12 teams were divided in the four pools of three teams each and the winner of each pool, only one will compete with the other three in the semi finals. And after the semi finals, the two winners from each will now compete against each other in the breathtaking final and the winner will win the trophy. In 1998 the final was between south Africa and West Indies and the winner was south Africa. They beat west Indies by 4 wickets to take their maiden title ant maiden tournament of this series.

The next tournament was hosted in Kenya in 2000, a non test playing nation. The format was the same and again 12 teams took part in it but this time in the final the opponents were , India and New Zealand and unfortunately India lost it in the final over by new Zealand by 4 wickets.

The next tournaments were announced in the every next two years , from 2004,2006 but the 2008 tournament in Pakistan was to be postponed in 2009 in South Africa due to some security reasons.

Till 2000-2004 , the non test playing nations took part in this tournament but after it the teams were reduced to 8 only, the top 8 in ICC rankings. From 2009 also the tournament was started to be held in every four years like the cricket world cup and took place exactly in between the Two cricket world cups, or we can say world cup took place in between the two champions trophy tournaments. Like after the 2011 world cup the champions trophy took place in 2013 and two years after in 2015 the world cup took place. Then after other two years , the trophy took place again in 2017. And the same pattern repeated when recently CWC took place in 2019.

But now in 2021, the champions trophy tournament is now closing and in it’s place the t20 cricket world cup will take place. I don’t know why it’s happening as it’s a really good tournament and got love from many people all over the world and honestly I would say that it’s my favorite tournament of all time and it’s beauty and format is all different from others. So I should wish that this tournament goes on forever and many other nations should get the chance to play in it more, so that it can take cricket to a next level.🙏🙏🙏🏆…..