Papua New Guinea have won the East Asia Pacific qualifier for the men's T20 World Cup in Japan this past week, but there's just one problem - nobody knows what their pathway is from here.

Last time out, the best two teams from the EAP qualifying pathway and Papua New Guinea (as a 2024 main tournament qualifier) played in a combined Asia/EAP qualifier. This time however, it is unknown whether PNG or any of the other top teams - Japan were runners up and Samoa third - will progress to the Asian qualifier, another region's qualifier, direct to the T20 World Cup, or perhaps to a proposed revival of the global qualifier.

Japan players during the tournament (ICC)

It's not just that this information hasn't been made available to the media or the public either - a source from one of the teams confirmed to CricketEurope recently that they too are in the dark.

If it strikes you as odd that a pathway event could take place without knowing what the pathway actually is, you'd be right, but it isn't unusual for the ICC to change pathways in the middle of them, or even not tell teams that it is a pathway event.

It's a deeply unserious way to run a sport, but it's par for the course when it comes to the International Cricket Council.