Image Credit- ICC
The ICC has released more information regarding the
modifications to the qualification process for the 2027 ODI World Cup, which
will be hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, just days before the
first CWC League 2 tri-series of the cycle.
34 other teams will compete in qualification for the
14-team tournament, in addition to South Africa and Zimbabwe, which are
automatically qualified as Full Member hosts. The Netherlands has been demoted
to Associate competition due to the cancellation of the CWC Super League, as
was widely anticipated. Only ICC Full Members are now able to qualify directly
through the ODI ranking table. Together with South Africa and Zimbabwe, the top
eight full members on the ODI table at the yet-to-be-determined cut-off date
will receive direct qualifying, while the top two Associates will join the
top-ranked players at the CWC Qualifier. There will now be four spots available
at the qualifier instead of two due to the World Cup’s expansion from 10 to 14
teams.
Four new teams will have the opportunity to gain a
spot in the CWC Challenge League when the inaugural CWC Challenge Playoff,
which begins in Kuala Lumpur next week, takes place on the bottom rung of the
qualification ladder. In the eight-team one-off competition, the four
lowest-finishing teams from the previous Challenge League season—Italy,
Malaysia, Vanuatu, and Bermuda—against Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and
Tanzania (who qualified via the T20 rankings) to see which four teams advance
to the third-tier List A competition for the upcoming cycle.
The Challenge League itself is still essentially the
same, consisting of two concurrent six-team contests that each group competes
in three round-robin tournaments during the cycle. The top two teams from each
group, rather than just the winners of each, will advance to the 2026 CWC
Qualifier Playoff, which is a significant shift from the previous cycle. Thus,
the Qualifier Playoff will now consist of eight teams instead of six, with the
top four Challenge League teams facing the bottom four from CWC League 2.
Whether all four of these League 2 teams will face the
possibility of relegation during the Qualifier Playoff is still unknown. Only
the bottom two teams from League 2 faced elimination to the Challenge Leagues
in the previous edition; in the end, only Papua New Guinea was demoted to make
room for Canada. Now that two more Challenge League teams are involved in the
Qualifier Playoff, it is possible for up to four of them to advance to League 2
and obtain ODI status.
The structure of CWC League 2, which consists of
consecutive six-match trilateral series with each team playing its opponents at
home, away, and on neutral ground, will largely remain the same for the
upcoming cycle. The second-tier ODI League is currently an eight-team league,
albeit the Netherlands was demoted from the Super League and Namibia had to go
through qualifying even though they were co-hosting the World Cup. It is no
longer a perfect triple round-robin as a result. With the exception of one home,
one away, and one neutral set of matches, each team will play four of its
opponents six times overall and three of its opponents in just four games.
League 2’s top four finishers will once more advance
straight to the World Cup Qualifier and will therefore be guaranteed ODI status
for the upcoming cycle. Meanwhile, the bottom four finishers go down to the
Qualifier Playoff, where at least two, if not all four, may face relegation to
the Challenge League and forfeit their ODI status. Tomorrow is the opening
match of the first League 2 trilateral series in Kathmandu, where the hosts,
Nepal, will play Namibia as the curtain raiser and then the Netherlands two
days later.