Zimbabwe relegated to playing the likes of Uganda possibly Malawi, Tanzania to get to next T20 World Cup

From the highs of pulverising the whole field in Bulawayo this past July, as they made their way to the T20 World Cup 2022, Zimbabwe have suffered the ignominy of being relegated to Regional Qualifiers to get a berth at the next edition.

First the little of news. Zimbabwe lost to India by 71 runs on Sunday. They were poor.

But earlier, the Netherlands provided a giant-killing act when they beat South Africa by 13 runs.

That means the Netherlands jumped to fourth in the log and are in the main draw for the 2024 T20 Cricket World Cup automatically.

Bangladesh then lost to Pakistan and they now take the two remaining slots based on rakings along with Afghanistan. Ranked 11th, Zimbabwe have to go down to the Qualifier route.

It was an end to an extremely poor campaign after the Pakistan win, in which the team appeared to see too far beyond the next match, and based on quite simply unacceptable batting performances, quite rightly deserve the embarrassment.

While playing nations such as Uganda and the likes for a World Cup spot means qualification should be somewhat of a formality, it reverberates in corridors where Zimbabwe has been saying it needs more access.

The propaganda machine has said repeatedly that Zimbabwe deserve to be at the top table. For the 15 players, mostly on the batting end, they suggested the opposite. They repeatedly were horrible in the Powerplay, losing the most wickets (23) including teams knocked out in the first round.

Going to the tournament without a batting coach was always going to be a problem, especially as the Netherlands stacked their technical team with Gary Kirsten and Dan Christiaan. It was no surprise that the habits from the Lalchand Rajput error, pre-Lance Klusenere started creeping in.

And so, from the highs of that Pakistan win, Zimbabwe leave this World Cup in a worse of position than when they arrived at it.

With Test status having been firmly in the pocket for Zimbabwe 30 years this 2022, this is a mess. Ireland is the only other Test nation forced into a Qualifier, but they are five years in, so they are still finding their way.

Just to settle it for you, the top two from the two Qualifiers below get to a regional Qualifier.

Zimbabwe, Uganda and Namibia await them.

The top teams from that Qualifier will make it to the T20 World Cup 2024.

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