The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Friday announced the qualifying process leading up to the men's T20 World Cup, which will take place in 2021 in India.

According to the ICC, 16 teams will take participate.

Afghanistan stands in seventh place in the ICC T20 ranking and is expected to be eligible.

The 16 teams will compete for four T20 World Cup spots in two global qualifiers with the top two teams from each progressing to the event proper in 2021.  

The 12 teams, which make round two of the ICC T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia, will gain automatic entry into the event the following year. 

“The decision to replace the Champions Trophy with a T20 World Cup in  2021 was driven by our commitment to global growth and use T20 as our vehicle to do that,” ICC Head of Events Chris Tetley said as quoted in a statement by the organization. 

“We worked through a number of options together with members and we’re all strongly in favor of this approach which allows for both global and regional competitions on the pathway to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup  2021,” he added. 

There will be 11 regional qualification events that will take place between March and September 2020, according to ICC. 

The two eight-team global qualifiers will take place between March and July 2021 and the distribution of the 16 teams across the two events will be confirmed following the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 when all participants will be known.