The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Champions Trophy returns after an eight-year hiatus, with Pakistan hosting the tournament from February 19 to March 9.
The tournament will be the ICC’s only men’s limited-overs competition in 2025, with eight teams vying to lift the trophy and adorn the winners’ white blazers.
Here’s media’s ultimate guide to the tournament:
The championship, originally named the ICC Knockout, was conceived as an elite tournament among cricket’s Test-playing nations and devised to fill the four-year gap between the ICC’s 50-over World Cup and help expand the game globally.
The inaugural edition was held in Bangladesh in 1998 and won by South Africa.
With the introduction of the ICC T20 World Cup in 2007 and the ICC World Test Championship in 2019, the Champions Trophy was discontinued after the 2017 edition, which was hosted by England and won by Pakistan.
As the tournament makes its comeback for the ninth edition, the holders are hosting Pakistan’s biggest international sport event in 29 years.
The South Asian nation last hosted an ICC event in 1996, and the March 2009 gun attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus in Lahore caused the cancelation or disruption of professional cricket tours in Pakistan for years to come.
For Pakistan, hosting a successful international tournament can help change the country’s perceptions, cricket experts told media.
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