The defending T20 World Cup champions West Indies will join another World Cup winner Sri Lanka in the qualifying round of the next edition of the tournament scheduled for next year.
Sri Lanka had to qualify for the Super 12 stage of the tournament this time as well while West Indies got knocked out of the tournament after winning just one out of five games they played in this edition.
The automatic qualifiers will be decided after the conclusion of the ongoing edition of the T20 World Cup. Apart from the winners and the runners up, there will be top six teams as per the ICC T20 Rankings who will qualify for the Super 12 stage of the tournament from the outset.
The International Cricket Council has mandated the cutoff date as November 15 to finalise the top six teams on the rankings and it’s most likely that eight teams will be the hosts Australia, England, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, South Africa, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
England and Australia are already through to the semi-finals from group 1 of the ongoing tournament while Pakistan have qualified from group 2. There is huge uncertainty surrounding the four teams for the semi-finals and it could be any side among Afghanistan, New Zealand and India to join Pakistan as semi-finalists from the group.