T20 Qualifiers in UAE

[TV Ted Ellery]

Is anybody else following the qualifying tournament for next year's t20 world cup in Bangladesh? I know a lot of you aren't partial to t20 cricket to put it mildly, but I still think it's the best vehicle for spreading cricket's popularity worldwide.

The tournament features 16 teams vying for six places in next year's world cup. The world cup proper will consist of two stages, the first contested by the six winning associate countries and Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, from which the top two sides will advance to the next round to take on the rest of the test playing nations. The benefit of this format is that it avoids the lopsided games while still giving the minnows a chance to play at the highest level. For an emerging but impoverished country like Nepal or PNG, who are both performing extremely well in the qualifiers, an appearance at the world cup would be invaluable financially but also in terms of exposure. There are certainly a few guys in the qualifying tournament who could make a decent living playing in t20 competitions around the world.

The results so far have been very surprising. PNG, Bermuda and Nepal have performed particularly well, beating more fancied opponents. In the case of PNG, they accounted for Ireland in the warm-up game, before trouncing Kenya and Netherlands. I tend to support these three teams because they are made up primarily of home-grown players. Ireland, Afghanistan and Uganda also deserve credit in that regard.

The tournament still has a fair way to go but I predict a final top 6 of:

1. Ireland
2. Afghansitan
3. UAE
4. Nepal
5. PNG
6. Bermuda

Namibia and Holland could easily knock one of those teams out of the top 6.

USA are doing well but they've had an easy draw so far.

Scotland, Canada and Kenya look shot.

Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy and Uganda will make up the numbers.

 

[TV Ted Ellery]

For anybody interested, the 6 teams to go through to the t20 world cup in Bangladesh are:

1. Ireland 2. Afghanistan 3. Nepal 4. UAE 5. Holland 6. Hong Kong

PNG narrowly missed out after a disastrous final performance against Hong Kong ruined what was other a very positive tournament. Other notable countries to miss qualification include Namibia, Canada, Scotland and Kenya.

I was gutted to see expat-filled teams like UAE and HK qualify at the expense of teams with local players like PNG, Bermuda, Uganda etc.. The composition of the HK team, in particular, is a farce. It's basically Pakistan's second team.

 

[TV Ted Ellery]

As I mentioned in the first post, the prospect of any of these teams facing Aus, India etc.. is slim because they still have to get through a preliminary qualification group with Zimbabwe and Bangladesh and only the top two teams advance to the next stage. I imagine Bangladesh and Ireland will prevail from that group.

 

[stupidhumour]

Thanks for posting about this.

Living here in HK and seeing how hard the guys work in difficult circumstances with little-to-no governmental support is a credit to the team (We only have 3 turf grounds here now after the government re-claimed the pitches on military grounds etc). I will hopefully get there to watch them in Chittagong in March and I think they still have a few suprises up their sleeve. Nepal are also a team to watch for the future.

Re expats etc their captain (Atkinson) & one of the better batsmen (Chapman) are both born in HK; and the majority of the sub-continent guys moved here with their families (i.e. parents) a long time ago (I am not going to speak against families moving FROM Pakistan) and are by no means cricket mercenaries. Hopefully the success of this team will spark more funding and opportunity to spread the game further into Greater China.