The International Cricket Council have announced that twelve teams will earn automatic qualification for the 2024 T20 World Cup, which is scheduled to take place in the United States and the Caribbean.
The governing body has reached a conclusion and has finalised the qualification process for three tournaments in total, including the Women’s T20 World Cup and the Women’s ODI World Cup, which will be held in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
The 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup promises to be a cracker of the tournament, with 20 teams involved for the first time since its inception in 2007. The qualified teams will include the top-eight ranked teams, followed by hosts USA and West Indies, who have also earned a berth in the tournament, while the last two teams will be getting an automatic qualification as well, based on the ICC T20 ranking as of November 14, 2022.
If the West Indies do make it into the top eight of the ICC T20 rankings, then the next three highest-ranked teams will make it through to the T20 World Cup. The eight other teams will comprise of ICC’s regional tournament winners, with two participants each from Asia, Africa and Europe. One team will also represent the Americas and the East Pacific regions.
The process for the Women’s T20 World Cup is also quite similar, with eight teams qualifying automatically before the tournament. For the remaining sides, a qualifying tournament will be held to determine the rest of the participants. Another heartening discussion that took place was to give a few more associate nation’s womens’ teams an opportunity to play ODI cricket more often and be considered for global events based on ODI rankings.
The U19 Women’s World Cup was also among the topics taken up, as it was decided that the inaugural edition of the event will be played in January 2023 in South Africa, a huge boost for women’s cricket world over, as the women’s game is also being popularised. It has been said that event will be fully online, with a participation of 16 teams. The tournament will take place between February 9 and 26 at few locations inside New Zealand.
