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On October 19, The Gambia forfeited the opening game of the Men’s T20 World Cup qualifier, against Rwanda at Nairobi.
Kenya are hosting the 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Regional Final Qualifier B. Apart from the hosts, the group also includes Rwanda, The Gambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Seychelles.
The tournament was supposed to begin with a Gambia-Rwanda clash. The captains of the six teams arrived at the venue and posed for the official photoshoot a day ahead of the match, but it emerged soon after the scheduled match start time that The Gambia had forfeited the match.
There has been no official release from the ICC or the organisers on the reason yet, but journalist Adam Theo confirmed that “most of the team didn’t make it to the venue in time due to documentation issues”.
It is not very clear what these documentation issues are, or how they prevented the Gambians from arriving at the venue. However, Law 1.1 states: “By agreement a match may be played between sides of fewer than, or more than, eleven players, but not more than eleven players may field at any time. If, during the match and for whatever reason, a side is reduced to fewer than the original number of nominated players, the match shall continue as long as it is possible to do so under the Laws or any agreements made before the toss”.
In other words, The Gambia could have started with fewer than 11 cricketers, waiting for the rest of the team to arrive. They could even have played the entire match without 11 players.
Two teams from each group will proceed to the next round, where they will join Namibia and Uganda. Tanzania and Malawi have already qualified from Group A, while Group C consists of Botswana, Eswatini, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Saint Helena.
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