Champions Trophy 2025 qualification scenarios: How England, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Netherlands can qualify

The top eight teams from the 2023 Cricket World Cup will qualify for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 which will take place in Pakistan. The hosts have qualified automatically for the eight-team tournament and as they are certain to finish in the top eight in the 2023 World Cup, the seven other highest-ranked teams will also qualify for the Champions Trophy.

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India, South Africa and Australia qualified by reaching the World Cup semi-finals and ensuring that they cannot fall out from the top three. New Zealand, Pakistan and Afghanistan who currently occupy the fourth, fifth and sixth spot respectively cannot also be pushed out of the top six as only three group matches are left.

Two spots are still undecided and four teams are fighting to get into the top eight. The four team includes England, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands. Sri Lanka is the only team among these to have completed their nine matches in World Cup 2023. This means they cannot have more than four points that they have currently.

England, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are all also on four points each but have a game to play.

Remaining fixtures:

England vs Pakistan

Bangladesh vs Australia

Netherlands vs India

England are in the driver’s seat in the seventh spot and have a better NRR (-0.885) than Bangladesh (-1.142) and the Netherlands (-1.635).

Scenarios

— In such a case, England should qualify for the Champions Trophy if they beat Pakistan and continue to have a better NRR than the other candidates. If they lose then they will be mostly out of the race unless Bangladesh and the Netherlands lose their matches.

— England can also qualify if only one of Bangladesh or Netherlands win and Jos Buttler of Co continue to have a better NRR than other teams including Sri Lanka.

— Bangladesh and the Netherlands have a game in hand but their NRR is behind that of England’s. So their first priority should be to win to ensure they don’t stay behind England in terms of points and should ensure they better their NRR because that is going to be a deciding factor in the end.

— Bangladesh and Netherlands however are up against Australia and India respectively, which for now looks like an advantage for England and also to some extent for Sri Lanka.

— For Sri Lanka, the equation is simple as their matches are over. Not more than one of England, Netherlands, and Bangladesh should win their match. Also, the losing teams should end up with a worse NRR than that of Sri Lanka (-1.419).