Bangladesh officially out of T20 World Cup, ICC names Scotland as replacement

Scotland has officially been named as Bangladesh's replacement for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2026, the ICC announced on Friday, January 23. Bangladesh decided to pull out of the ICC event, citing security concerns and saying that their concerns weren't adequately addressed by the cricket governing body.

India Today learnt on Saturday, January 24, that the ICC told Bangladesh Cricket Board via a letter that they had been replaced by Scotland. The ICC held a meeting in Dubai on Friday, which was convened by Chairman Jay Shah to decide on the fate of Bangladesh and its participation in the tournament. In a last-ditch effort, Bangladesh had written to the ICC to refer the matter to the dispute resolution committee. However, the committee cannot act as an appeal forum and decided to go ahead with ICC's final call.

In this case,



the decision was made to replace Bangladesh with Scotland had the BCB not acted upon their ultimatum to decide on their participation. The BCB decided to hold a press conference on Thursday after a meeting with the players to boycott the upcoming ICC event.

"The International Cricket Council (ICC) today announced that Scotland will replace Bangladesh in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 after the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) refused to participate in the tournament per the published match schedule."

"The announcement comes after the ICC, in the absence of any credible or verifiable security threat to the Bangladesh national team in India, rejected the BCB’s demand to move its matches from India to Sri Lanka, in the 20-team tournament to be played from 7 February to 8 March," read the statement from the ICC.