The Cricket World Cup Super League has got off to a muted start, but there is the potential for some strange playing condition wrangling at the end to make it all worthwhile.

Sri Lanka’s poor start to their men’s Cricket World Cup Super League campaign has significantly increased their chances of failing to make it to the 2023 Cricket World Cup.

After five games, they somehow sit below even the Netherlands, yet to play a game in the competition, with five losses and an over-rate penalty seeing them on -2 points currently. The bottom five teams in the Super League won’t qualify automatically for the World Cup, and that could well be Sri Lanka’s fate.

However, that wouldn’t be the end of their hopes. Those five teams will head to the Cricket World Cup Qualifier event, where they will be joined by the top three teams in the Cricket World Cup League 2, a competition featuring Nepal, Scotland, UAE, Namibia, Oman, Papua New Guinea and the USA, and the top two teams from the Qualifier Play-Off. The Qualifier Play-Off will be contested between the bottom four teams in the CWCL2, and the top two in the Cricket World Cup Challenge League. The top two teams at the CWCQ will qualify for the World Cup proper.

Still, even if that sounds complex enough, there’s even more at stake, and more potentially confusing possibilities that could eventuate. The CWCQ doesn’t just determine who will qualify for the Cricket World Cup; it also decides who will contest the next round of the CWCSL and CWCL2. The bottom-placed team in CWCSL will be in danger of being replaced by the top team in CWCL2, but only if they finish below the champions of the latter competition.

Since two teams qualify from the CWCQ for the World Cup, that means, theoretically, that the top two teams could consist of the winner of CWCL2, and the wooden-spoon winners in the CWCSL, and if the latter finish behind the former, they would both qualify for the Cricket World Cup and be relegated from the Cricket World Cup Super League in one blow.