Uganda Cricket Team openly expresses desire to replace Pakistan at T20 World Cup 2026

Uganda expresses desire to play T20 World Cup [Source: LouisDBCameron/X.com]

After weeks of speculation around Pakistan's participation in the upcoming T20 World Cup, the teams awaiting the final decision, including Uganda and Iceland, have started looking at the fun side of the wait by openly posting about their willingness to play the competition on the internet.

Following Scotland's inclusion in the tournament to replace Bangladesh in Group C, Uganda remains the highest-ranked side out of the competition, barring the omitted Bangladesh.

Uganda's desire to replace Pakistan

The social media shenanigans between the associates started with Iceland Cricket tweeting a long and fun apology, announcing their unavailability for the tournament, while taking a dig at Scotland.

In the follow-up to this funny tweet, Uganda, who genuinely stand an outside chance to qualify for the tournament, if Pakistan pulls out reacted to the tweet.  "Ready when you are," they wrote.

Cricket Uganda

@CricketUganda

Dear @ICC, If a T20 World Cup seat opens, Uganda is ready - packed and padded. Passports warm (not ice). No bakers leaving ovens or ships U-turning. Heat, noise, pressure? We’ll bring the bold kit. Yours, Ready when you are 🇺🇬🏏

Pakistan's participation remains uncertain

With just a week left for the competition to commence in India and Sri Lanka, the former T20 World Cup winners are yet to confirm their availability for the tournament after threatening to boycott it to show their support for Bangladesh, who were not allowed to play all their matches in Sri Lanka.

PCB chair, Mohsin Naqvi, had said the board shall comply with any decision that the government of Pakistan takes, and later met the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as well as the players, in recent days. In a nutshell, as of January 30, the final decision is still awaited.

According to the original schedule, they are set to play all their group stage and subsequent matches in Colombo, where India will also travel on February 15.

Uganda's return to the T20 World Cup dream hangs by a thread

During the 2024 edition of the T20 World Cup, Uganda joined the likes of the United States of America and Canada as the newest teams to feature in an ICC event, making it 24 teams in the history of the sport to do that.

Under the captaincy of Brian Masaba, they finished 4th in Group C, winning one of their four matches against Papua New Guinea by 3 wickets.

Unfortunately, ahead of the forthcoming edition, they failed to qualify from the T20 World Cup Africa Region Final, finishing number 3 in Group B of the competition behind Zimbabwe and Tanzania. They reached the 5th place play-off and defeated Nigeria by 66 runs, but it wasn't enough to make it to the main event.

Namibia and Zimbabwe were the two sides qualifying for this tournament from the region. However, if any team now pulls out, as the highest-ranked team outside the 20 qualified teams, they will be the replacement.