UAE's Zahoor Khan celebrates the wicket of Namibia's Jan Frylinck during the ICC men's Twenty20 World Cup 2022 cricket match between Namibia and United Arab Emirates at Kardinia Park in Geelong on October 20, 2022. - -- IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE -- (Photo by Martin KEEP / AFP) / -- IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE -- (Photo by MARTIN KEEP/AFP via Getty Images)
The dust may only just have settled on the 2022 T20 World Cup, but already eyes are turning to the 2024 event, hosted across the USA and the Caribbean. With a long overdue expansion from sixteen to twenty teams, and a switch from global to regional qualifiers, four teams are set to benefit from the expansion, including a minimum of two debutants. Should all 16 teams present at the 2022 event successfully requalify for 2024, which four teams are most likely to join them?
There’s no surprise that the USA are the major beneficiaries of the T20 World Cup expansion, playing co-hosts with the West Indies. With co-hosting duties comes automatic qualification, meaning that USA will make their T20 World Cup debut without needed to lift a bat.
But automatic qualification by no means makes the USA undeserving, and considering their progress since 2019, would have been likely to qualify either way. They weren’t too far from qualifying for 2022’s 16-team tournament, falling only to a superlative innings from Bas de Leede in a winner-takes-all semi-final.
In fact, the 2024 event ends a crescendo of cricket that looks set to establish USA on the cricketing map for good. With two seasons of Minor League Cricket already in the books, the high-profile Major League Cricket will launch in July 2023. With it comes a brand-new stadium in Dallas, Texas and may be considered a dry run ahead of 2024’s main event. The World Cup may then act as a springboard to make American cricket both mainstream in the USA and throughout the cricketing public.
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