DOHA (Qatar): Qatar along with 85 other teams will be aiming to qualify for the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced on Monday.
Qatar are in Asia A qualifying group to be hosted by Kuwait between April 3 to 9, 2021.
Other teams in the group are Bahrain, Maldives, and Saudi Arabia.
The tournament will be held in October and November in 2022 with 15 spots in Australia will be decided through a four-step qualifying process which starts in April, 2021.
11 regional qualification tournaments across five regions have been rescheduled to 2021, due to COVID-19 and will now feed into the 2022 Australia event.
In the lead up to the Australia event, there will be 225 Men’s T20 Internationals scheduled across 13 months.
“We are delighted to announce qualification for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. A remarkable 225 internationals are scheduled to be played providing a substantial number of playing opportunities to all Members,” said Chris Tetley, ICC Head of Events.
For the first-time ever Hungary, Romania and Serbia will be competing for T20 World Cup qualification, and Finland will play host to an ICC event for the very first time.
In a festival of cricket it will also be the first time that Japan will host a qualifier, on the back of the U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier they will host two weeks before.
The 16 available spots in the Global Qualifiers will be filled by one team each from the Africa and EAP Qualifier respectively. They will be joined by two teams each from the Americas and Europe qualifiers. Finally, Asia which has a Qualifier A and B will see one team from each event make up the eight spots from regional qualification.
