One year on from that iconic day in Melbourne, we look back on the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup Final.
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In 2016, the West Indies took out both the Men’s and Women’s World Twenty20s on the same day in Eden Gardens.
The women’s Final was first, and had a smaller crowd as the Kolkata stadium slowly filled in time for the men’s game, where Carlos Brathwaite would famously deposit Ben Stokes over the ropes for those four sixes.
Among those in the crowd for both matches was Nick Hockley, the CEO of the next Men’s and Women’s World Twenty20s to be played in Australia in 2020.
A year earlier, Hockley had been the General Manager of Commercial and Marketing for the Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. A whopping 93,013 fans had gone through the turnstiles at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the final of that event between the two hosts.
“The 2015 Cricket World Cup really opened our eyes to how big ICC events could be and how big they can be in Australia,” Hockley, now the interim chief of Cricket Australia, told icc-cricket.com ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Women’s T20 World Cup Final 2020.
With that knowledge in hand and having had the chance to reflect on the 2016 tournament, an important decision was made.
“That 2016 Final in Eden Gardens, the Women’s Final felt a bit like a curtain raiser and we just thought we can actually do it better ,” Hockley reflected. “The first key decision was to play the Women’s event…
