The 2022–2025 ICC Women's Championship is the third edition of the ICC Women's Championship, a One Day International (ODI) cricket competition that is being contested by ten teams, to determine qualification for the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup.[1] The top five teams, along with the hosts India,[2] will qualify directly for the World Cup.[3] The bottom four teams of this tournament and the top two teams from the ICC ODI rankings will progress to a Women's Cricket World Cup Qualifier tournament.[4] Each team will play a total of eight three-match series, with four of them played at home, and four played away.[5]
In September 2018, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced that they were exploring the option to expand the Women's Championship from eight teams to ten teams, therefore including Bangladesh and Ireland in future editions of the competition.[8][9] It was originally decided that the 2021 Women's Cricket World Cup Qualifier would be used to determine the new teams, but when the tournament was called off midway through due to the discovery of a new variant of COVID-19 in Southern Africa,[10] Bangladesh and Ireland joined the ICC Women's Championship for this cycle,[11] based on their ODI rankings.[12]
In March 2022, Cricket Ireland was the first cricket board to confirm fixtures for the 2022–2025 ICC Women's Championship,[13] when they announced Ireland's home series against South Africa for June 2022.[14] Later in March 2022, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) confirmed three series,[15] with two of those at home, against Sri Lanka and Ireland, and a tour to Australia.[16] Pakistan's home series against Sri Lanka was the first series of the 2022–2025 ICC Women's Championship.[17]
Teams
The following teams were part of the Women's Championship:[18]