Possibility of Zimbabwe playing this year's T20 World Cup

[lobsang]

There is a huge question mark on whether or not the Afghans can play this year's T20 World cup in light of the ban on women's cricketing activities in Afghanistan by the Taliban-led government. Cricket Australia has already stated that they may not be able to host Afghanistan in November for a one-off test series and on the top of that, they may not even play against the latter in upcoming T20 World Cup in a scenario where they are pitted against each other and many other other teams may follow suit. And the ICC meanwhile in their recent official statement said, they will be making a call on the future of Afghanistan cricket in November after the T20 World Cup. So with all these new developments, do Zimbabwe stand a slight chance of being the replacement in the event that the Afghans get replaced by an another team? Or maybe they will pick an extra team from the qualifying rounds IMO.

[secretzimbo]

If they really are kicked out, quite possibly as we are the highest ranked team that didn’t qualify.

Although we weren’t even part of the qualifiers of course so it’s pretty unfair if they pick us. Would be more likely to be whoever narrowly missed out at the global qualifier (I think it was Hong Kong from memory?).


But........they won’t be kicked out of the World Cup anyway. Why would they? I do think it’s highly likely they will lose Test status at some point. But as an associate member there is an exemption that allows associates to not field women’s teams for cultural reasons. And as an Associate they can still play in world cups of course.

If australia or whoever refuse to play them they should be punished for not fulfilling their fixture. I bet Australia and England - the apparent moral guardians of the world - would happily play their ally Saudi Arabia (who conveniently dont have a women’s team either) or China (who have even worse human rights).

Tim Paine trying to be the moral overlord of cricket is nothing new lol.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

No chance of Afghans loosing test status. Proteas were also banned because of internal issues but didn't lost test status instead they played test soon after the country issues was solved. But yes many teams will break their cricket ties with Afghans due to taliban system of govt just like happened to proteas during apartheid.

Zimbabwe missing the upcomming T20I World Cup appears to be a big joke as there is no proper investigation happened to the reason of the ban, neither the culprits were punished, instead Zim lost a chance to represent a World Cup

[Mr Twig]

Zero chance Zim play the T20 World Cup

If they really are kicked out, quite possibly as we are the highest ranked team that didn’t qualify.

Although we weren’t even part of the qualifiers of course so it’s pretty unfair if they pick us. Would be more likely to be whoever narrowly missed out at the global qualifier (I think it was Hong Kong from memory?).

I think it's the UAE, which is convenient.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

A plenty of similarity between Afganistan of 2021 and Zimbabwe of 2003, both took world of cricket a surprise in starts by upsetting top teams, both looked to have great future in becoming strong team in future, both had stars and stars in making, players with high value, crowd pulling teams but cricket in both nation got uncertain when one is ruined by country's racial politics and other in the verge of getting destroyed by country ruling by terrorist organization

Very soon we are going to see Afghans taking the route of Zim and playing for other nations

[eugene]

I wonder if there will be a bunch of Afghan players seeking to qualify for the UAE, Oman, etc? Pakistan is probably out of the picture as the Taliban are essentially the Pakistani government in disguise.

[Kriterion_BD]

I wonder if there will be a bunch of Afghan players seeking to qualify for the UAE, Oman, etc? Pakistan is probably out of the picture as the Taliban are essentially the Pakistani government in disguise.

What if they just turned the Oman team into the Afghan team. A team in exile.

[eugene]

Actually I could see Qatar recruiting the Afghan team.