Struggling to get my head around the 2027 Cricket World Cup qualification announcement, tbh.

I spent five years at the ICC working on the World Cricket League, which was then the pathway for Associate nations trying to reach a cricket World Cup. The system was not perfect. There were divisions, regional competitions, promotion and relegation, a multi-year championship, a final global qualifier. But the basic promise was clear: keep winning and you moved closer to the World Cup. Qualify, and you were in.

For the 2015 World Cup, the leading eight Associate countries played a two-and-a-half-year World Cricket League Championship. Ireland and Afghanistan qualified directly. Scotland and the UAE came through the final global qualifier. And that was it. They had qualified. They arrived in Australia and New Zealand and played the same six-match group stage as everyone else .

The ICC has now confirmed the 2027 ODI World Cup will keep its 14-team field . BUT the three lowest-ranked qualified teams will first play a preliminary “Super Series”, with only one progressing to the twelve-team main draw . The announcement doesn't yet explain how those three teams will be determined, which is part of why the format feels so difficult to follow.

That means a country can spend years navigating a longer qualification pathway, earn one of only fourteen World Cup places, then play just two matches before going home. In 2015, every qualified team played six matches at the World Cup itself. In 2027, two qualified teams may play a third of that.

Cricket has technically expanded the World Cup while building a format where some of the teams who qualified for it don't feel like they did.

There's a defensible case for the decision. Administrators want fewer dead rubbers. Broadcasters want stronger matches earlier. A shorter group stage doesn't automatically make a worse tournament. But almost all of that format risk falls on the smallest countries. The established teams get a proper World Cup. The bottom three get another qualifier stapled to the front of it.

That isn't a 14-team World Cup. It's a 12-team World Cup with the final qualifying round moved inside the tournament gates so the press release can still say fourteen.

The comparison with football is obvious. FIFA is seriously discussing whether its World Cup should eventually go from 48 teams to 64. That may well be too many. More is not automatically better. But football understands something cricket keeps forgetting: the World Cup is not only a broadcast product, it's the incentive structure for the entire global game. Cape Verde reaching a World Cup matters for far more than the four matches Cape Verde got to play. It tells forty other federations the pathway is real, that investment produces progress, and that the top table isn't permanently reserved for the same eight names.

Cricket needs that signal too, and right now this format sends the opposite one.

Of course, none of this means the ODI World Cup should expand indefinitely. Most countries barely play the format, bilateral ODIs have lost context, and the sport still owes itself a proper answer on what the ODI World Cup and the Champions Trophy are actually for in a T20-first world. T20 should carry most of cricket's global growth. It travels better, it's easier for new audiences to pick up, and it produces more of the upsets that make a World Cup feel like one.

But if the ICC has decided fourteen countries have qualified, treat all fourteen like they've qualified. Once fourteen teams have earned their place, they should all enter the World Cup proper and receive a credible minimum number of matches. The groups, the seeding and where the jeopardy sits are for the ICC to solve.

Give the smallest teams a genuine group stage. Give their supporters enough time to care. Give their boards a platform they can actually take to governments, sponsors and players instead of a five-day trip and a flight home.

When I worked on the World Cricket League, the pathway could be brutal. But the destination was understandable: finish in the top two of the Championship, or the top two of the final qualifier, and you were in. Full stop.

More than ten years on, qualifying for the World Cup is harder to explain, not easier. It should have gone the other way.

Qualifying should still mean you're in.