Dubai, Dec 14 (FN Bureau) The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday announced the qualification pathway for the Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia which is set to take place in October and November 2022. The 15 spots in Australia will be decided through a four-step qualifying process which starts in April 2021. 11 regional qualification tournaments across five regions have been rescheduled to 2021, due to COVID-19 and will now feed into the 2022 Australia event.
With the return of cricket in early 2021, we will see 86 different teams with the opportunity to fill the 15 World Cup spots – with hosts Australia already securing one – over a 13-month qualification campaign. For the first time ever Hungary, Romania and Serbia will be competing for Men’s T20 World Cup qualification and Finland will play host to an ICC event for the very first time. In a festival of cricket it will also be the first time that Japan will host a Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier, on the back of the U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier they will host two weeks before. At regional level there will be 67 Associate Members taking part. Due to the depth of strength within Africa and Europe, both regions have sub regional qualifiers feeding into a final qualifier for the region. Africa, Americas, EAP and Europe will have one top tier regional qualifier and Asia will have A and B to determine which teams will progress into the two eight-team global qualifiers.
The 16 available spots in the Global Qualifiers will be filled by one team each from the Africa and EAP Qualifier respectively. They will be joined by two teams each from the Americas and Europe qualifiers. Finally, Asia which has a Qualifier A and B will see one team from each event make up the eight spots from regional qualification.