Meet the T20 World Cup hopefuls
Netherlands, Namibia, Scotland, Oman and Papua New Guinea have battled their way through the qualifiers to the tournament proper. What lies ahead of them?
Netherlands
Having participated in the 2016 T20 World Cup, Netherlands got a direct entry into the T20 World Cup Qualifier, where they won five out of six league games and then trounced UAE in the playoffs to seal a World Cup spot. They went on to win the Qualifier, beating Papua New Guinea in the final.
Beating England at Lord's in a last-ball thriller at the 2009 T20 World Cup, and then repeating the feat in the 2014 edition with a 45-run victory in Chattogram. Another high was chasing down 190 in 13.5 overs against Ireland in Sylhet, also in the 2014 edition.
Ryan ten Doeschate: He was the second-highest run scorer for Netherlands in the Qualifier. A year later, he topped the run charts for Essex at the 2020 Vitality Blast. Although his recent form hasn't been great, and he no longer bowls in T20, the 41-year-old will be determined to make an impact in what will be his last tournament.
Netherlands are paired with Sri Lanka, Ireland and Namibia in Group A, from where the top two teams will qualify for the Super 12s. If they can beat Ireland in their opening game, they should make it to the next round, given they are favourites against Namibia. Anything beyond that will be a miracle.
Namibia
Namibia went undefeated in the Africa Regional Finals to earn a trip to the T20 World Cup Qualifier. After two defeats to Netherlands and PNG forced their backs to the wall at the start of group play, Namibia rallied for five straight wins to clinch a spot in their maiden T20 World Cup.
Qualifying for the 2003 World Cup, where they went winless. More recently, they achieved ODI status by winning the 2019 World Cricket League Division Two on home soil.
Gerhard Erasmus: The captain is the spine of the batting order, capable of anchoring the innings or revving up the engine when necessary. In a big win over Singapore in the World Cup Qualifier, he struck four sixes in a 29-run over. He also later showed his class with a half-century against Ireland. Erasmus bowls more than handy offspin and is also Namibia's best fielder.
Namibia have drawn the short straw, getting paired with former world champions Sri Lanka, along with Ireland and Netherlands, both of whom they lost to in the T20 World Cup Qualifier by wide margins. It will be an uphill battle to advance to the Super 12s.
Scotland
Scotland were the best team going into the 2019 World Cup Qualifier, ranked 11th in T20Is, but had a lacklustre outing, with three wins and three losses in the group stage, eventually finishing fourth on the Group A table. But they won the third qualifying playoff against hosts UAE and clinched their spot at the T20 World Cup for the second straight time.
After failing to qualify for three T20 World Cups in a row, Scotland made it to the 2016 edition after winning the Qualifiers in 2015 (jointly with Netherlands), but exited in the first round after notching up a solitary win, against Hong Kong. They gained their best-ever ranking of No. 11 in T20Is in 2017, and got their first win against England in a one-off ODI in Edinburgh in 2018.
George Munsey:The hard-hitting opener was Scotland's highest run scorer in the Qualifiers in 2019, with 234 runs in eight matches. His T20I career strike rate of 155.01 is fourth best among batters who have faced a minimum of 500 balls. One of his best performances in international cricket came in September 2019 against Netherlands, when he hit 127 not out off 56 balls, the highest score in T20Is by a Scotland player.
They are likely to progress to the Super 12s - they start their first round against Bangladesh (ranked sixth to Scotland's 15th), but their next two games are against Papua New Guinea and Oman, the teams they beat in the Qualifiers. But keeping in mind their fickle form in that tournament, and that they haven't had much T20 game time ahead of the main event, they might be surprised by these teams.
Papua New Guinea
After a series of close playoff heartbreaks at the 2013 and 2015 T20 World Cup Qualifiers, in 2019, Papua New Guinea progressed from the East Asia-Pacific regional qualifier to top Group B at the global qualifier in the UAE, their 5-1 record clinching them an automatic berth. Their only loss in the group stage came against Scotland. Arguably their most impressive win came by five wickets with an over to spare against Netherlands before to the same opponents in the tournament final.
Securing ODI status in 2014 at the 50-over World Cup Qualifier in New Zealand. They had a brief lapse in status from 2018 to 2019 after a poor finish at the World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe, but regained it a year later at WCL Division Two in Namibia.
Assad Vala: Papua New Guinea's do-everything captain is a towering figure, literally and figuratively, in the national team. The six-foot tall batter's size translates into muscle at the crease where he is a powerful striker of the ball at No. 3 and consistently PNG's top scorer. He also regularly bowls a full quota of offspin and is often a handful for left-handers to get away.
PNG's fortunes are the hardest to predict because of their difference in form between formats. They lost eight straight ODIs in the two months leading into the 2019 Qualifier, before morphing into a T20 juggernaut in the UAE. They are in similarly terrible ODI form going into the T20 World Cup, having lost another eight in a row to stretch their ODI drought to 16 straight losses. But few would discount their chances by conflating their ODI form with that in T20Is.
Oman
Oman entered the 2019 T20 World Cup Qualifier in the UAE as one of the group favourites and performed like it. Only a last-day slip-up in the group stage to Jersey denied them an automatic berth in the T20 World Cup - that went to Ireland, who finished with the same 4-2 record as Oman but with a superior net run rate. Oman then lost to Namibia in their opening playoff match before finally clinching a spot in the T20 World Cup in a tense second-chance eliminator against Hong Kong.
Beating Ireland in their opening match of the 2016 T20 World Cup in Dharamsala. It showed that their qualification journey was no fluke and they used it as a springboard to securing ODI status in 2019.
Oman gained the biggest advantage due to the tournament venue reshuffle, which now sees them hosting matches in the opening round. They are a far stronger and deeper team than they were at the same event five years ago. Now that two teams advance from each opening round group instead of one, they have the strongest odds of any of the Associate teams to reach the main draw.