Why no team outside top 12 nations won a match at the T20 World Cup

On paper, the 2026 T20 World Cup was supposed to be the moment cricket’s second tier announced itself. Across the opening weekend, the Netherlands had Pakistan 119 for seven with 12 balls left and the United States had India reeling at 77 for six. Both Full Members escaped—Pakistan by three wickets, India by 29 runs—but the message was clear: the gap is shrinking. Yet when the group stage closed, every one of the 96 associate nations that had travelled to Sri Lanka and India was packing its bags. Not a single associate recorded a victory over a Full Member, and none advanced to the Super 8.

The ICC’s 20-team expansion delivered more fixtures and more television time for cricket’s emerging nations, but it also exposed the structural ceiling they still hit. Pre-seeding locked second-round slots to rankings before a ball was bowled, so even a shock upset only swapped one Full Member for another—Zimbabwe inheriting Australia’s Super 8 place this year—without altering the competitive geometry. In five-team first-round pools, one surprise win is rarely enough to nudge net-run-rate arithmetic; in four-team groups, one upset can redraw the entire bracket. The format, designed to protect broadcast certainty, quietly protected competitive certainty as well.

Financial gravity works the same way. The 12 Full Members share 88.8 per cent of the ICC’s $600 million annual pot, with India’s board alone collecting $231 million. The 96 associates divide the remaining 11.2 per cent—about $700,000 each, one-sixtieth of the BCCI’s share. Those cheques fund pathways, coaching and, crucially, calendars. After the Netherlands’ final match on 18 February, their next international is not scheduled until European summer. For players without franchise contracts, that is not rest; it is a return to part-time work and indoor nets, a six-month competitive vacuum that erodes the sharpness they had just displayed against India.

T20’s brevity gives associates a puncher’s chance—a spell, a cameo, a catch can flip a chase—but repetition is what turns moments into habits. Afghanistan, elevated to Full Member status in 2017, show what guaranteed fixtures and funding can do: a semi-final in 2024, a pipeline of IPL talent and a domestic academy in Kabul. Nepal, the United States and the UAE are trying to follow via home-grown T20 leagues, yet those tournaments are themselves products of market size and infrastructure most associates cannot replicate. Without broader ICC investment, the gap between associates who can stage a league and those who cannot becomes another layer of inequality.

Until the calendar offers associates regular, high-level fixtures, World Cup heroics will remain anecdotal. The margins are no longer chasms; they are centimetres on a boundary rope or a dropped catch like Max O’Dowd’s that let Faheem Ashraf escape. But margins tested only once every two years tend to break the same way. Until cricket’s revenue model rewards victories instead of membership status, the tournament table will keep reflecting the bank statement—and the top 12 will keep advancing.