Former Australia opener gets picked in Italy's national team
The qualifiers for the ICC T20 World Cup 2026 will run from June 9 to 16 in Rome, a week after the start of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 in the West Indies and the USA. It will be a ten-team competition belonging to the European Conference, with five teams divided into two different groups.
The qualifying matches for the 2026 T20 World Cup will include as many as 108 nations, so the process of qualifications have been started two years before the scheduling of the main event. The 2026 edition of the T20 World Cup will happen jointly in India and Sri Lanka, who also get a direction entry in the event due to being hosts.
The first round will happen in two different venues in Rome - Roma Cricket Ground in Spinaceto and the Simar Cricket Ground in Aprilia. The hosts, Italy, are placed in Group A with France, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, and Turkey.
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In Group B, Austria, Hungary, Israel, Portugal, and Romania will compete to advance to the next stage. Italy is hosting the qualifying rounds for the T20 World Cup for the first time in the history of the game.
Joe Burns gets picked for Italy's national team
The hosts, Italy, have announced their squad for the event, with Gareth Kyle Berg leading the nation. Among the 14-men squad, the former Australian opener Joe Burns finds a place.
Burns has featured for Australia in 23 Tests and six ODIs but hasn’t been in contention for a while now. He was also excluded from the contracts offered by Queensland, which might have tempted him to look for alternatives.
Having made his Test debut back in 2014, Burns has accumulated 1442 runs at an average of 36.97, including seven fifties and four centuries. In ODIs, he made his debut in 2015, scoring 146 runs at an average of 24.33, including a fifty.
His last outing for Australia came in a boxing-day Test match against India in 2020 in Melbourne. Burns will now feature for Italy, and the whole Italy squad will gather in Rome starting June 2nd.
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