The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday (July 27) officially launched the Cricket World Cup Super League, due to kickstart via England's home series against Ireland, beginning in Southampton on Thursday (July 30).
The league, planned since 2017, has been launched to provide greater context to ODI fixtures between the World Cups.
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13-teams, including 12 ICC full members and the Netherlands, which qualified by winning the now-disbanded ICC World Cricket League 2015-17, will play eight three-match series, four home and four away, over the next two years to determine direct participants at the 2023 World Cup in India.
Top seven sides and host India will qualify directly to the flagship event in November 2023, while the other two slots in what is likely to be another 10 team competition, will be finalised through a lengthy qualification process.
The five bottom sides at the Super League will compete for those two slots at the global qualifier alongside Associate members that progressed through the ladder via Cricket World Cup League 2 as well as the two Cricket World Cup Challenge Leagues.
In the Super League, each team will be awarded 10 points for a win and five for a no result or tie. Teams will be allowed to schedule more than three fixtures in a particular series, given they are mutually agreed between the two counties and aren't organised by the ICC, but there will be no points on offer for the extra matches.
It was originally scheduled from May 2020 to February 2022, but the sport's global shutdown amid COVID-19 pandemic meant that the World Cup cycle had to be extended by six months, which also affected the Super League.
The Cricket World Cup League 2, from which top three teams will directly make it to the global qualifier and from where one of the teams could well replace the team finishing 13th at the CWC Super League in the next cycle, had its fixtures suspended as well. But those are expected to be rescheduled.
