After a year’s delay due to Covid-19, the 12th edition of the Women’s Cricket World Cup scheduled for March/April 2022 has finally got its eight teams who will be competing for the World Cup title in New Zealand.
On Saturday, ICC has announced the cancellation of the ongoing qualifiers for the remaining three spots due to a new Covid-19 variant in South Africa which has forced travel restrictions to some African countries which include the qualifiers host Zimbabwe as well. Further, they have finalized the spots on the basis of the ODI rankings which makes Bangladesh, West Indies, and Pakistan join the host nation New Zealand and the four teams which qualified based on the 2017-2020 ICC Women’s Championship namely Australia, India, England, and South Africa.
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: 🚨
Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies will progress to the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand 2022, as per team rankings, in keeping with the tournament’s playing conditions.#CWC22 #CWC22Q
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) November 27, 2021
Talking about each of the eight teams, the defending champions England who occupy the 3rd position in the ICC ODI ranking will be looking forward to their 5th ODI World Cup title. They had an unfortunate exit in the semi-finals of the 2020 T20 World Cup after the match was abandoned due to rain and India, who topped their Group was declared as the winner.
Australia has been the most successful team of women’s cricket has occupied the top spot in the ICC ranking for all three formats and bagged six ODI World Cup and five T20 World Cup titles. They had a 26 ODI winning streak which was broken by India last month.
The Final 8 Teams to compete in Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 are here:
🇳🇿 New Zealand
🇦🇺 Australia
🇮🇳 India
🏴 England
🇿🇦 South Africa
🇵🇰 Pakistan
🌴 West Indies
🇧🇩 Bangladesh #CWC22— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) November 27, 2021
India, the 2017 World Cup Runners-up and current ODI ranked 3rd, is one of the most favorites especially after an exceptional performance against the Aussies as well as during the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) which concluded today where Harmanpreet Kaur became just the third international player to win the WBBL Player of the Tournament and Smriti Mandhana recorded the highest individual score in the history of WBBL equalling it with Australia’s Ashleigh Gardner while other Indians performed quite well too.
Ranked at Number 2 in the ODI ranking is South Africa who was the semi-finalist for both the 2017 World Cup and 2019 T20 World Cup. The Proteas players Lizelle Lee and Marizanne Kapp are at the top of the batting and all-rounders category respectively of the ODI ranking.
The 2000 Champions and the host of the 2022 World Cup, New Zealand would be looking to perform well on home soil. Led by all-rounder Sophie Devine who is the two times WBBL Player of the tournament awardee and finished at second for the award in the recent edition, the White Ferns are ranked at 6th in the ODI ranking
West Indies who are the 2016 T20 World Cup champions and 2013 World Cup Runners-Up would be looking to their first title under the captaincy of one of the best Windies Women players Stafanie Taylor who has got a good number of achievements to her name, being ranked as the fourth-best ODI all-rounders.
Qualifying for their first-ever ODI World Cup is Bangladesh who is looking in good form considering their series against Zimbabwe just before the World Cup qualifiers and the three matches they played in the qualifiers before it was called off.
The last of the eight teams is the Pakistan Women team who hasn’t won any major tournament yet except the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games where they were the champions. Though they have played all editions of the T20 World Cup, they have just been a part of three ODI World Cups- 1997, 2009, and 2013, out of which they have finished without any victory in 1997 and 2013. In 2009, they made it to the Super Six round.
World Cup is one of the biggest tournaments of cricket and with less than 100 days to ICC Women’s World Cup 2022, each of eight teams is actively gearing up to grab the title. The race to the cup will begin from 4th March 2022 with the semi-finals on 30th and 31st and Finals on 3rd April.
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