Kenya outscores Australia, RCB, yet no record
This Monday, the Kenyan Cricket Team cantered to a fairly phenomenal score of 6/270 in a twenty overs a side match. Playing in a World T20 qualifying match at the brand new Gahanga Cricket Stadium in Kigali, hosts Rwanda had little solace throughout the innings filled with breathtaking stroke-play other than the picturesque sights offered at the ground.
Although Kenya surpassed the T20I record for the highest score of Australia's 3/263 against Sri Lanka at Pallekelle by seven runs, as they did for the T20 best of Royal Challengers Bangalore's 5/263, this score will not be registered in the record books despite both the participating sides being full ICC T20 members, along with 102 other nations, as per ICC's new categorization.
After the ICC meeting in Kolkata earlier this year, “We are particularly pleased with the unanimous agreement to award all T20 bilateral games international status," ICC chief executive David Richardson said in April.
"We are committed to growing the game and T20 is the vehicle through which we’ll do this and removing restrictions and having all Members ranked is a positive step forward. We have already introduced a regional qualification pathway for the ICC World T20 in 2020 which is now underway and we will continue to evolve our qualification structures across all three formats."
However, those changes do not come into effect in men's Twenty20 cricket up until the end of the current year, hence had this score been tallied January 1, 2019 onwards, it would have found a niche for itself in the upper end of the superlative spectrum. Interestingly enough, this match was not even allocated a T20 status, meaning RCB's record stayed unscathed too.
In women's cricket, all international cricket is bound to be recorded as official T20 cricket July 1, 2018 onwards.
For similar reasons, matches being played in the inaugural Global T20 League in Canada are not being recorded in the player's statistics given the fact that Canada is not a full T20 member as of now and hence the domestic cricket and franchise cricket conducted by it will not be accounted as T20. This little quirk in the time-windows will bring some respite to David Warner's worry for his T20 statistics, given that he has struggled in Canada, managing only 12 runs in 6 innings playing for the Winnipeg Hawks.