T20 World Cup 2026: Why Scotland replaced Bangladesh and why Jersey would feel hard done by this

Bangladesh’s loss has become Scotland’s gain as the European country is headed to the 2026 T20 World Cup after initially missing out on the qualification to the biennial event.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Saturday announced that Bangladesh have been replaced by Scotland in the tournament after the Asian side insisted on a change in venues because they did not want to play their matches in India. Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) said that it would not send team to India because of security concerns in the country.

However, ICC had made it clear that the venues would not be changed this close to the competition leading to Bangladesh’s ouster from the event.

Why Scotland replaced Bangladesh?

Scotland were given the opportunity to play the World Cup in place of Bangladesh because of their high ranking. Scotland, ranked 14 in the ICC T20 rankings, were the highest ranked team to be not playing the tournament. ICC took this fact into consideration and invited the Scottish side to play the World Cup.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that Scotland are getting lucky in terms of getting to play the T20 World Cup because another team pulled out.

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In 2009, Zimbabwe were forced to withdraw because hosts England had banned the team from touring. Then too Scotland were the side that got the benefit.

Scotland have played in six of the nine T20 World Cups. Despite having a weak team, they have managed to pull off some upset victories. They defeated England in the 2024 T20 World Cup and finished equal on points with them but were eliminated due to poor net run rate. In the 2022 T20 World Cup, the had shocked West Indies while they had also defeated Bangladesh in the 2021 edition of the tournament.

Why Jersey got unlucky?

Interestingly, despite having one of the better teams in the associate cricketing circuit, Scotland could not qualify for the 2026 edition of the T20 World Cup.

In the European qualifiers, they finished a disappointing fourth with only top two teams getting to advance to the tournament. Netherlands finished at the top and qualified. Italy and Jersey were tied for points at the second spot but since the former had a better net run rate, they qualified.

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Jersey had impressed at the qualifiers and had even beaten Scotland in a thrilling game to finish on level terms with Italy. However, since they are ranked 27th in the world currently, they were not considered despite them actually finishing ahead of Scotland in the qualifiers.