Cricket tournaments — fixtures, format, knockout brackets
The whole cricket calendar, organised by when it actually happens.
The Tournaments desk covers bilateral tour windows, ICC events (World Cup, World Test Championship, World Twenty20, Champions Trophy), the major franchise leagues (IPL, BBL, PSL, CPL, The Hundred) and the smaller invitationals that draw the headlines around the year. Each tournament has its own fixture page, venue notes, format reference, and a current knockout bracket if it’s a multi-team event.
The desk treats every tournament the same way it treats a single fixture — three sources before publishing a result, a refresh after the host broadcaster publishes, and a clear note when the source changes.
The formats, written so you can scan them.
Format and fixtures
A tournament is more than a list of matches. The format reference covers how many matches each side plays, how the points are split, what the rain rule is, and how the knockout bracket works. The desk publishes the format reference one week before the first fixture.
Continue reading
Venues and scheduling
Every tournament carries a venue-by-venue note: dew likelihood, boundary size, day/night split, weather expectations. The scheduling reference is the desk’s read on what the calendar is doing this year.
Continue readingKnockout-stage analysis
A knockout is not a league match. The captain’s first decision is whether to bowl first or bat first; the second is whether to play the extra spinner. The desk publishes a knockout-stage analysis for every multi-team tournament, with the captain’s tactical template and the historical record at the venue.
Three tournaments to follow this quarter.
IPL 2026
Ten franchises, eighty-four league matches, a smaller auction purse, and a likely shorter window for the qualifiers. The desk is rebuilding the squad pages from scratch and publishing venue notes two weeks ahead of the first ball.
World Test Championship
The cycle finishes with a Lord’s Final in June. Five sides have a mathematical shot at the final, three of them on points percentage. The desk tracks the percentage points after every match.
T20 World Cup qualification
The qualification pathway opens in the next quarter. The desk follows the regional qualifiers and the play-off structure for the 2026 tournament.
Tournaments desk questions, answered.
Which tournaments are covered?
IPL, BBL, PSL, CPL, The Hundred, ICC senior events (men and women), bilateral tour windows, and selected invitationals. Smaller T10 events are covered on the news section.
How do you run the fixture refresh?
The host broadcaster feed refreshes once an hour. The desk refreshes whenever a fixture is added, rescheduled or cancelled.
Do you cover franchise leagues’ auctions?
Yes — the IPL auction gets live coverage, and selected franchise auctions get a single summary post.
What about the WTC?
The World Test Championship is published as its own tournament page, with a points-percentage table and a separate final-fixture page once the venue is confirmed.
How do you handle fixture clashes?
The desk publishes the clash, the broadcast channel, and the recommended feed for the headline fixture. We do not promote one format over another.
What about reserve days?
Reserve days are listed in the format reference for every knockout fixture. Most international matches now have a reserve day built in.
Where is the prize pool published?
The desk does not publish prize pools for any operator that runs contests. Tournament prize pools that are public (such as ICC events) are linked to the official release.
Can I follow a single franchise?
Yes — team pages and franchise pages are linked from the tournament fixture.
The Tournaments desk ships inside the app.
Refreshed hourly, with knockout brackets, format reference and venue notes.
The signal the calendar hides.
The cricket calendar lists matches, dates, and venues. The calendar does not list the part that matters most: how each side approaches the format. India’s home ODI approach differs from their away ODI approach; Australia’s day-Test approach differs from their day-night Test approach; South Africa’s first-innings Test approach differs from their fourth-innings chase approach.
The desk publishes the approach for each tournament, with the captain’s tactical template and the recent-form table. The captain’s tactical template is the part of the calendar the desk considers under-reported by the standard cricket coverage. The captain’s history in the format — the bowling rotation, the batting order, the field settings in the powerplay — is what the desk reports on, not just the team sheet.
The tournament calendar also hides the dew window. A 7 pm start at Mohali is a dew-friendly fixture; a 1:30 pm start at Lord’s is not. The desk publishes the dew window alongside the calendar, because the dew window is what the captain looks at before picking the XI.
The venue note is the third signal the calendar hides. Every venue behaves differently in the second innings — Chinnaswamy carries more dew than Chepauk; Wankhede flattens out by the thirtieth over; Eden Gardens turns square after the first session. The desk publishes the venue-by-venue notes alongside the calendar.
The formats, in plain language.
A Test match is played over five days, with each side batting twice. The first-innings total matters more than the second-innings total in most Tests; the captain who wins the toss and bats first scores above-average thirty percent of the time. The pitch changes between day one and day five — a green seamer on day one may turn square by day four.
An ODI is fifty overs per side. The dew window in a day-night ODI is the largest single determinant of the toss impact. A captain who wins the toss and chases in a day-night ODI wins 58–62 percent of completed matches. In a day ODI, the toss impact is closer to 50–50.
A T20I is twenty overs per side, with the same logic as the T20 franchise leagues. The captain’s bowling rotation in the death overs is the largest single swing; the dew window affects the chase significantly.
Why reserve days exist, and when they don’t.
Reserve days are built into most international fixtures and into the knockout stages of every multi-team tournament. The reserve day is a full additional day of play, scheduled in case the original fixture is washed out by rain. The reserve day is held at the same venue, with the same officials, and with the same rules.
Reserve days are not always used. Most ODIs and T20Is complete on the original day; only a small fraction of fixtures go to the reserve day. The ICC publishes the reserve-day status for every multi-team tournament before the tournament starts.
For Tests, the reserve day is built into the schedule as an additional day — a five-day Test can run up to six days if needed. The match referee calls it; the captain’s preference is taken into account. Most Tests do not need the reserve day.
What the desk does when two formats overlap.
A fixture clash is when two formats run parallel matches at the same time. The desk publishes both fixtures on the live ticker; the scoreboard carries the headline (the marquee) and the secondary (the smaller) fixtures. The user picks which one to follow on the desk.
The captain matrix is published per fixture, not across fixtures. A captain pick that scores well in one fixture may not score well in the parallel fixture. The user picks one captain per lineup, not per fixture, so the captain focus shortlist is the editorial shortcut for choosing between the two.
Why the calendar’s windows matter.
The cricket calendar is divided into windows — periods of continuous activity in one format. The IPL window is roughly two months, the bilateral-tour windows vary in length, and the ICC-event windows are the longest. Each window has its own editorial rhythm; the captain matrix, the role-balance chart, and the points reference are all rebuilt at the start of each window.
The desk publishes the window timeline on the tournaments page, with the start and end date of each format’s window. The user can plan their editorial coverage around the windows.