Why Are Sri Lanka And West Indies Not Playing In The Champions Trophy 2025?

After a long gap of 29 years, Pakistan is hosting an ICC event in the form of Champions Trophy 2025. The only qualification criteria was the ODI World Cup 2023 standings and as a result, a few teams missed out.

Sri Lanka who is the co-champions of the 2002 edition of the Champions Trophy, had a terrible run in the ODI World Cup 2023 as they managed to win only two games.

After sealing victories in back-to-back matches against the Netherlands and England, Sri Lanka ended up losing all the rest of the matches against Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India, and New Zealand.

Bangladesh despite being a weak team when comparatively to Sri Lanka, managed to reach the top eight in the World Cup 2023. They managed to get past Sri Lanka on the basis of net run rate despite having the same number of points.

West Indies, on the other hand, failed to take part in the 2023 ODI World Cup after not getting through the qualifiers, and as a result, they are not playing in the ongoing Champions Trophy 2025.

Now that the ODI World Cup is set to feature 14 teams from 10, West Indies will get an opportunity to play the tournament in 2027.

A total of eight teams are taking part in the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy 2025. The likes of India, Pakistan, England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are playing in the tournament.

All the teams have been divided into two groups of four each with two teams set to advance through to the semis from each group.