The International Cricket Council has called off three Men's T20 World Cup Sub-Regional Europe qualifiers, each of which were pathway tournaments to the 2022 World Cup in Australia, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.The Sub-Regional Europe qualifiers - A and B - were scheduled to be played in Finland, while Belgium was set to play host to the qualifiers C over the next two months."After extensive consultation with both hosts, participating Members, the relevant governments, public health authorities and in line with the ICC's comprehensive contingency planning of COVID-19 the only course of action was to cancel the three event," the ICC said in a statement.
"The cancellation was as a result of over half of the countries still facing significant restrictions on free movement and extensive quarantine periods for returning Members back into their home countries, as well as domestic restrictions in place preventing teams from selecting and preparing squads for the tournaments. Full approval from the Belgian government for the staging of the event based on the Bio-Safety Mitigation strategies proposed by the ICC was also not obtained. "As a result of these cancellations, Italy, Germany and Denmark will go through from qualifiers A, B and C respectively, thanks to their positions on the ICC T20I rankings table (as on April 30, 2020). These three teams will now join Jersey in the qualifier to be played in October in Spain, where two spots are up for grabs in the A or B global qualifiers. "As part of the ICC's comprehensive contingency planning process we have been working continuously with the Hosts, participating Members and all stakeholders to maximise the opportunity for qualification to be determined on the field of play," ICC's head of events, Chris Tetley said in a statement.
