International Cricket Council (ICC) have been firm on identifying T20 format as the growth vehicle to spread the game among the Associate member countries and have already confirmed T20I status to all International Women’s matches effective 01st Jul 2018 and for all International Men’s matches effective 01st Jan 2019.
For providing most of the Associate members the opportunity to take part in the qualification pathway through sub-regionals, ICC included 79 member countries in the 5 regional sub-regional qualifiers for 2020 ICC World T20 (9 from ICC Americas, 8 from ICC East Asia-Pacific, 30 from ICC Europe, 14 from ICC Asia and 18 ICC Africa). Another 8 member countries were given direct entry into the Regional Qualifiers based on their participation in the 2024 event in the US and the Caribbean Islands.
In order to participate, members required to have unique domestic teams playing a minimum of 10 matches over the past two years and also give the entry fees to register in the tournament. ICC have now made an mandate for any member country having eight (8) Men’s unique domestic teams playing minimum of 5 matches in the past two year period (across domestic structure in a particular country) eligible to participate without having to give the entry fees to register for sub-regional qualifiers. For Women’s teams to be eligible at the senior and U19 pathway tournaments, there has to be a minimum of four (4) domestic clubs playing domestic cricket in any particular country.
This relaxation of eligibility criteria will now provide the remaining 11 member countries (for example, Tajikistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uzbekistan, Falkland Islands etc), who did not/could not take part in the 2026 T20 World Cup sub-regional qualifiers (few were new members granted Associate status in the 2025 ICC Annual General Meeting) to look into the structure of domestic cricket in their respective countries and make themselves eligible for the next edition of the sub-regional qualifiers for 2028 ICC World T20 event.
