Watch the tournament live on Sky Sports Cricket over the next two weeks
Thursday 17 October 2019 12:37, UK
Fourteen sides are fighting it out for the final six spots at next year's T20 World Cup, with those places to be determined at a two-week jamboree in the UAE.
The World Cup Qualifier, being held across Dubai and Abu Dhabi from October 18 to November 2, includes Scotland, Ireland, Jersey and Nigeria.
At the end of it, we will know which half dozen sides join Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the eight-team first round in Australia in a year's time, where from there the top four will enter the Super 12s stage alongside the big boys.
Selected games from the World Cup Qualifier will be shown on Sky Sports Cricket over the next few weeks, so here is all you need to know...
Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, Hong Kong and Oman made the tournament having qualified for the previous World T20, in India in 2016, but not having a high enough ranking to qualify automatically for the 2020 event. Zimbabwe were also in this camp but their suspension from ICC events due to political interference has seen them withdrawn.
The United Arab Emirates are competing as the host nation, while the field is principally filled out by the successful teams from regional qualification tournaments, including Papua New Guinea, who made it through the East Asia-Pacific pool and Singapore, the Asian qualifiers.
Jersey pipped Germany on net run-rate to advance from the European section, with Canada and Bermuda progressing from the Americas and Namibia and Kenya from Africa. Nigeria finished third in African qualifying but were then placed in the tournament following Zimbabwe's removal.
Scotland, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Singapore, Kenya and Bermuda are in Group A, with UAE, Ireland, Oman, Hong Kong, Canada, Jersey and Nigeria in Group B.
The group winners will advance into the semi-finals and ensure direct qualification for the T20 World Cup, with the second and third-placed teams making the semi-final play-offs.
The sides who finish fourth will also make the knockout rounds but know that one defeat will end their hopes of reaching the World Cup. The teams placed five, sixth and seventh in each pool are eliminated.
Here's where it gets complicated!
The second and third-placed sides from each pool will face each other, with the winners of those matches then advancing to the semi-finals alongside the group winners and, therefore, also reaching the T20 World Cup proper.
The losers will drop into the fifth-place play-off semi-finals against the teams who finished fourth in the pool phase. They will then square off with the two winners reaching the World T20 and the two losers going home.
The six successful sides will carry on to determine who wins the Qualifier, as well as the third and fifth-place play-offs. Got all that!
You are probably familiar with most of the Scotland and Ireland players but slightly further afield Sussex's Delray Rawlins will represent Bermuda, while the Netherlands squad features many names familiar to county watchers, including Leicestershire's Colin Ackermann - who took world-record T20 figures of 7-18 against Birmingham Bears in the Vitality Blast this summer - Somerset's Roelof van der Merwe and Essex's two-time County Championship-winning captain Ryan ten Doeschate.
Watch the ICC T20 World Cup Qualifier on Sky Sports Cricket (channel 404), starting with Hong Kong versus Ireland from 11am on Friday.
