ICC announces qualification process for the T20 World Cup 2021

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the qualification process for the ICC T20 World Cup 2021, which will take place in India.

All the 104 member nations of the ICC will have the opportunity to qualify for the tournament by clearing the regional and the global qualifiers, if they don’t get an automatic entry.

For the T20 World Cup 2020, the teams which were in top 10 in the ICC rankings till 31st December 2018 got an automatic entry, while six more teams joined them later through the qualifiers.

Out of the 10 teams who got an automatic entry to T20 World Cup 2020, top eight teams in the rankings have advanced to the second round of the tournament already, while the ninth and the 10th ranked teams will have to play round one with six other teams, which have made it to the tournament through qualifiers.

So, in T20 World Cup 2020, there are a total 16 teams, out of which eight teams (namely India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, England, West Indies, South Africa and Afghanistan) are in round two, while the other eight (namely Ireland, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Namibia, Netherlands and Scotland) are in round one.

Four out of the eight teams from round one will advance to round two to join the other eight teams, which are already in round two. Four teams from round one which will fail to make it to round two of T20 World Cup 2020 will go into the global qualifiers ”Group A” of T20 World Cup 2021.

They will be joined in global qualifiers Group A by four more teams, which occupied 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th position in the ICC rankings till 1st January, 2020 (namely Zimbabwe, Nepal, UAE and Hong Kong).

The remaining 88 teams in the ICC rankings will compete in the regional qualifiers held across Africa, Americas, Asia, East-Asia Pacific and Europe. Eight teams will come out of these regional qualifiers and will go into global qualifiers “Group B” of T20 World Cup 2021.

The teams which end up at the first two positions in global qualifiers Group A as well as in global qualifiers Group B will qualify for the main draw of T20 World Cup 2021.

12 teams which will make it to the second round of T20 World Cup 2020 will get an automatic entry to the main draw of T20 World Cup 2021.

That means the T20 World Cup 2021 will also be a 16-team event, just like T20 World Cup 2020. But, the former’s qualification process is different from that of the latter’s.

Featured Image Credits: Hindustan Times