2021 T20 World Cup: Four countries to qualify from 16-team ICC Qualifier

International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday confirmed that four among 16 countries will qualify for tournament proper of ICC World T20 scheduled to be held in India in 2021. event replaces eight-team Champions Trophy ODI tournament that was last held in 2017 in England. According to an ICC media release, 11 regional qualification tournaments will take place across five ICC regions (Africa, Americas, Asia, East-Asia Pacific and Europe) with eight teams progressing to one of two global qualifying events.

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Four countries to qualify from 16-team ICC Qualifier

Additionally, bottom four teams from T20 World Cup 2020, will join regional qualifiers in global qualification events along with next four best T20I ranked teams as of 1 January 2020. se four teams are Zimbabwe, Nepal, UAE and Hong Kong. This means 16 teams will compete for four T20 World Cup spots in two global qualifiers with top two teams from each progressing to event proper in 2021. 12 teams, which make round two of ICC T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia will gain automatic entry into event following year.

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ICC Head of Events Chris Tetley said: " decision to replace Champions Trophy with a T20 World Cup in 2021 was driven by our commitment to global growth and use T20 as our vehicle to do that. Of course that presented us with a one-off qualification challenge.

"Our regional and global qualification pathways have been established and consistently provide compelling and competitive cricket and we didn''t want to lose that despite tight timelines available to us.

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"We worked through a number of options toger with Members and we''re all strongly in favour of this approach which allows for both global and regional competitions on pathway to ICC Men''s T20 World Cup 2021."

All Members who meet ICC Event Participation Criteria (EPPC) will be eligible to participate in qualification for ICC Men''s T20 World Cup 2021.

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