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 61 member countries in the 5 regional sub-regional qualifiers for 2020 ICC World T20 (7 ICC Americas, 8 ICC East Asia-Pacific, 18 ICC Europe, 13 ICC Asia and 15 ICC Africa).
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 32 member countries, who did/could not take part in the 2018 sub-regional qualifiers to look into the structure of domestic cricket in their respective countries and make themselves eligible for 2019 sub-regional qualifiers for 2021 ICC World T20 event. Out of the remaining 32, 15 member countries belong in the European region only, while Argentina is the only member country in the South American region to have taken part in ICC Americas regional events.
