Despite improving in rankings, Sri Lanka has to qualify for 2021 World T20

Flashback to 2014, when Sri Lanka were crowned World T20 champions in Mirpur, Bangladesh

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Even with the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia being postponed to 2022, former champions Sri Lanka will still have to qualify for a place at the next ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, which is scheduled to be held in India in November 2021.

The ICC in its media release with regard to the scheduling of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup stated: 

“The format of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 will remain as it was for 2020 and all teams that qualified for that event will now participate in India in 2021. A new qualification process will be run for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022.”

Sri Lanka Cricket’s CEO Ashley de Silva confirmed that despite the postponement of the 2020 Men’s T20 World Cup, Sri Lanka will still have to go through the qualifying process to get into the Super 12 of the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in India even if they have improved in their rankings by the time the tournament is held.

When the final rankings for automatic qualification were taken up on 31 December 2018 for the 2020 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Sri Lanka was ranked 9th and Bangladesh 10th.

Both countries missed out on direct qualification for the final tournament Super 12s stage as only the top eight in the rankings gained automatic qualification.

Thus Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will compete in the first round of the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in India with the six qualifiers Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Ireland, Namibia, Scotland and Oman. These eight teams will play in two groups, with the top two in each group joining Australia, Pakistan, India, New Zealand, England, South Africa, West Indies and Afghanistan in the Super 12 stage.

Since December 2018, Sri Lanka has somewhat improved on their T20 rankings and moved to seventh position at present, with Bangladesh in eighth.

World champions West Indies and Afghanistan who have gained automatic qualification to the Super 12 of the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup have dropped down to nine and 10 slots, respectively. 

But that’s the way the cookie crumbles and Sri Lanka must accept its fate however unfair it may sound.

Sri Lanka won the Men’s T20 World Cup in 2014 and were runners-up in 2009 and 2012.