Eleven (11) African women’s teams are set to compete in Gaborone, Botswana for the African Qualifiers to the 2023 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa.
Host Botswana, Cameroon and Eswatini will be competing in an ICC women’s event for the very first time this week. The previous edition in 2019 was hosted and won by Zimbabwe, which was replaced by Namibia this year. As of July 2019, the international cricket council (ICC) suspended Zimbabwe Cricket with the team barred from taking part in ICC events.
Botswana first WT20I matches were contested as part of the Botswana 7s tournament in August 2018 against Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Zambia. They finished third on the table with three wins and two losses and then won the third-place playoff against Mozambique by a margin of nine wickets.
Cameroon women have been playing domestic T20 competitions at home. After the 2021 Cricket Joint Domestic League and year-long preparations for the international competition 14 out of the 25 players earlier preselected were retained to represent the country in the ICC tournament.
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier is supported by Dream 11 and is two steps away from the World Cup on the road to South Africa 2023. Hosts Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe will comprise group A, whilst Cameroon, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Uganda will form group B in the 11-team tournament to be played in Gaborone from 9 to 19 September.
The top two teams from each group will play in the semi-finals, before the two finalists compete for the lone qualification spot to the Global Qualifier 2022, on 19 September.
Meanwhile, on the global stage, top teams in the qualifiers will book their ticket to the global qualifiers, while second-placed finish, as well as the final position in the 8-nation global qualifiers, will be filled with the highest-ranked team in the regional qualifiers on the November cut off date, who missed out on topping their regional event table.