Women's World Cup 2021: India qualify for the tournament after ICC splits points from unplayed Pakistan series

India Women cricket team has qualified for the 2021 World Cup that will be hosted by New Zealand. The ICC technical committee decided to split the points between Pakistan and India for the series that was never played. And, on the back of three important credits, Indian Women remained successful in reserving their berth for the mega-event.

Actually, Indian Women were scheduled to play ICC Women’s Championship series against Pakistan last year. However, it was not possible due to the ongoing political tension between the two countries. So ICC awarded three points each to the respective teams.

ICC had awarded full points to Pakistan in 2016

In a press release, ICC said that the technical committee decided that the series between India and Pakistan could not take place due to the tension between the government of the aforementioned countries. Moreover, BCCI also cleared the fact that they failed in getting the respective clearance from their government in order to allow the Women’s team to participate in a series against Pakistan.

“With respect to the India v Pakistan series, the TC (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 Women’s Championship,” the ICC said in its statement according to ESPNCricinfo.

Earlier in 2016, BCCI didn’t give appropriate reason to ICC. And, in return, the cricket council had awarded all the points to Pakistan Women cricket team. But this time, the Indian cricket board had already submitted their detailed report back in 2018 clearing the facts to ICC. So, the technical committee had to the force majeure clause according to which it had to split the points between the two teams.

After ICC’s decision to split points, India Women managed to qualify for the 2021 World Cup as the fourth-placed team just behind Australia, England, and South Africa. With three places left in the tournament, now the qualifying games are scheduled to begin in July. But, it might get postponed due to the Coronavirus outbreak. However, ICC is expected to take an official call over the same in the upcoming days.