T20 World Cup Qualification System to be revamped from 2021
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T20 World Cup Qualification System to be revamped from 2021

The qualification system for the T20 World Cup will be revamped from the 2021 edition onwards and the Global T20 Qualifier played by 14 teams will be divided into a couple of smaller tournaments for qualification. Every tournament will have 8 teams in the mix. Right beneath these two major tournaments, there will be some changes made to the sub-regional system with lesser tournaments across Asia, Africa and the East Asia Pacific without the number of teams being lowered.

12 teams in the Super 12 stage of the 2020 edition will be getting qualification automatically for the edition in 2021. This means that the top 8 teams at the time of cut-off for 2020 (31st December, 2018) getting into the Super 12 stage are also getting qualification for the 2021 edition. These teams are thus India, Pakistan, England, South Africa, Australia, West Indies, New Zealand and Afghanistan.

Out of 8 more qualifiers for 2020, 4 who win through the first round to the Super 12 stage will be qualifying directly for the 2021 edition. The remaining 4 teams will come back into one out of the two sub-regional qualifier tournaments. The 8 teams vying for qualification will be Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, Scotland, Oman, Namibia and Ireland.

The remaining four teams will be joined at their qualifier stage by the UAE, Nepal, Zimbabwe and Hong Kong who got byes for skipping the regional qualifications based on their T20I rankings on 1st January, 2020. 8 more teams will be coming through regional qualifier tournaments, one each from Africa and East Asia Pacific and two teams each form Americas, Asia and Europe. The teams will be allotted on geographical bases and rankings alike. However, since the four teams to be dropped down from 2020 are still unknown, the final draw will be held post the 2020 edition of the T20 World Cup.

The regional ladder for qualification has also been cut with the Americas and East Asia Pacific regions holding single qualifying events only. Asia will have two tournaments for qualification and two winners will move to the supra-regional qualifiers. Europe and Africa will have the sub-regional and regional finals structures like before. The latter will have just two sub-regional tournaments as compared to three earlier and Europe will have three sub-regional pools. These will be hosted by Finland, Belgium and Spain. Three winners will go to the regional final with Jersey. Jersey, Nigeria and Kenya have garnered byes for regional finals, enabling them to skip the sub-regional qualifying stage. These were given on the basis of their rankings although at number 40, Nigeria is ranked lower than many African nations including Botswana and Uganda who will otherwise be undergoing sub-regional qualification tournaments. The process has been swift and unexplained due to the really short time between the 2020 and 2021 editions of the T20 World Cup. The fully 11 regional qualification tournaments are due between March and September, 2020 while two global qualifiers will be taking place between March and July, 2021 from where finalist will be qualifying for the first round of the 2021 T20 World Cup.

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