LAHORE: Pakistan women’s cricket team gained 19 points after the cancellation of three series of the ICC Women’s Championship, but it failed to get direct qualification for the ICC World Cup 2021 to be held in New Zealand.

However, Pakistan’s qualification for the ICC Women’s World Cup 2021 is an uphill task as a total of 10 teams will vie against each other for the remaining three slots. Australia (37 points), England (29), South Africa (25) and now India (23) have already earned direct qualification in the World Cup based on their performances and points they earned during series against their respective rivals, said the ICC press release here on Wednesday.

Although Pakistan (19), New Zealand (17), West Indies (13) and Sri Lanka (5) have completed the table after the ICC’s announcement on the cancellation of three series of the Championship, but still these teams have to compete against the remaining the two other teams with ODI status, Bangladesh and Ireland, and the winners of the five regional qualifiers — Thailand (Asia), Zimbabwe (Africa), Papua New Guinea (East Asia Pacific), United States of America (Americas) and Netherlands (Europe).

The ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier is scheduled to be played from July 3-19 in Sri Lanka, this is subject to review due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ICC Women’s World Cup 2021 will be hosted by six cities from Feb 6 to March 7.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the ICC Women’s Championship Technical Committee (TC) decided that teams would share points in all three series in the ICC Womens Championship that did not take place during the competition window.

With respect to the India versus Pakistan series, the technical committee concluded that the series could not be played because of a Force Majeure event after the BCCI demonstrated that it was unable to obtain the necessary government clearances to allow India to participate in the bilateral series against Pakistan, which forms a part of the ICC Womens Championship. Two other ICC Womens Championship series have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2020