ICC News: The number of teams increased for qualification to 2021 T20 World Cup to 16 teams
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After speculations of scraping the 2021 men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier, The ICC has made it clear the tournament will remain in a revised format.
Some leading associate members were pushing ICC to scrap the qualifier altogether, but instead the global qualifier field has been expanded from 14 to 16 teams that will be split into two eight-team qualifying tournaments.
Last year, under the 14-team format, six teams advanced to this year’s T20 World Cup in Australia. But for 2021, only four spots will be up for grabs. Two spots will each be given to the top two teams in each group of the 16 team qualifier.
The initial proposal which was reportedly under discussion was for the last four berths to be decided by four regional qualification finals. But ICC has five regions and berths are four, so to avoid chaos the global qualifier will remain.
Though the lead-in regional events will still be in use. Two teams each from Asia, Europe and the Americas will join the champions of East Asia-Pacific and Africa to contribute to the eight spots out of 16. The four teams which fail to advance to the Super 12 stage in Australia will also fall into the 2021 global qualifier.
The ICC has also stated that the remaining four spots be decided based on the rankings. Countries like Zimbabwe, Nepal, UAE and Hong Kong are the beneficiaries of this.
This decision to split the global qualifier from one 16-team event to two eight-team events is good for some new countries like USA or the Netherlands to host, with the two qualifiers being divided.
The lead-in five regional qualification finals for the 2021 men’s T20 World Cup qualification process will take place between March and September 2020. The two eight-team global qualifiers will then take place next year between March and July 2021 before the ICC men’s T20 World Cup in India in October.
