India have qualified for the 2021 World Cup after the ICC announced that the points for their series against Pakistan have been shared.
The series between the two nations was set to take place in the sixth round of the ICC Women’s Championship, the competition that helps decide the automatic qualifiers for next year’s World Cup in New Zealand.
The top four sides in the tournament – Australia, England, South Africa and India – qualify automatically for the World Cup, while Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka will have to go through the ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier that’s currently set to take place in Sri Lanka this July to qualify for next year’s World Cup. New Zealand, who finished in sixth place in the ICC Women’s Championship, qualify automatically for the World Cup as tournament hosts.
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The ICC also announced that Australia’s scheduled series against South Africa and New Zealand’s planned series against Sri Lanka will see a points split between the teams. Those two series have unable to take place due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but the ICC made clear in a statement that the India-Pakistan series did not take place 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.”
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While the series involving Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka had no impact on World Cup qualification, the India-Pakistan series did. Had Pakistan won 3-0, they would have gone past India in the points table and therefore have secured automatic World Cup qualification at their neighbour’s expense.
