ICC announces qualification process for Women's T20 World Cup

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the qualification pathway for the 2023 Women's T20 World Cup on Saturday. The ICC has rescheduled the 10-team marquee tournament to February 9-26, 2023.

Hosts South Africa and the seven top teams on the ICC women's T20I team rankings as of November 30, 2021 - from the teams that competed at the Australia 2020 edition - qualify automatically for the 2023 event.

37 teams will compete for the remaining two spots, starting at regional level in August 2021. This is an increase of 10 teams from the 2020 qualifiers, reflecting the continued growth of bilateral women's T20I cricket.

Eight teams - Bhutan, Botswana, Cameroon, France, Malawi, Myanmar, Philippines, and Turkey - are the latest additions to the ICC women's event. Brazil and Argentina will return to the competition for the first time since 2012.

The ICC sees this as a "nod" to the growth in women's cricket in smaller and developing countries.

Five regions will host a regional ICC qualifier

The five regions - Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and EAP - will each host a regional qualifying event. The USA, Scotland, Malaysia, Bostwana and Samoa will be the host countries for their regions.

The top team from each region will join the bottom two ranked teams in the women’s T20I rankings in the eight-team ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier 2022.

ICC said the final position will be filled by the highest-ranked team in the regional qualifiers on the cut-off date, who missed out on topping their regional event table.

ICC Women’s Cricket Manager, Holly Colvin said in an official statement:

“We are delighted to be welcoming the return of cricket for ICC women’s events. This is an exciting time for women’s cricket with the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 raising the bar for women’s sporting events. Sustaining and then building on the momentum from February is key and the start of the next Women’s T20 World Cup qualifying pathway is a great place to start."

The qualifying events will see a staggering 115 Women's T20Is played in ICC events. This will also provide an opportunity for these teams to move up the ICC Women's T20I rankings.