2023 Cricket World Cup Preview

The highly anticipated Cricket World Cup is set to finally get underway on Thursday.

The 2023 Cricket World Cup is set to be played in India, and the action will get underway on Thursday with England facing New Zealand in the opening game at the Narendra Modi Stadium. 48 matches are set to be played throughout this year’s World Cup, with games being played in a total of 10 venues in India. This year’s Final is set to be played on Sunday 19th November.

The most recent tournament took place in 2019, and it saw England taste success, beating New Zealand. Following a super over, England secured the win courtesy of the boundary count-back rule. The hosts had scored 26 boundaries compared to their opponent’s 17. This makes the opening game even more significant, with the two 2019 finalists going head to head.

This win in 2019 was England’s first World Cup win. England had previously missed out on glory after being losing finalists in 1979 (vs. West Indies), 1987 (vs. Australia) and 1992 (vs. Pakistan).

It will come as no surprise that England are amongst the favourites to win a second consecutive Cricket World Cup. If they did win the 2023 tournament, they would become the first nation since Australia to retain the World Cup on at least one occasion. Australia won three consecutive titles in 1999, 2003 and 2007.

The return of Ben Stokes will be a massive positive for England, and Joe Root was amongst the best players at the 2019 tournament, scoring 556 runs at an average of 61.77.

A number of other nations are amongst the favourites to win the World Cup. One is hosts India, whose most recent win in this tournament came in 2011 when man of the match Mahendra Singh Dhoni secured the win after an unbeaten knock of 91 runs off 79 balls. Also, the hosts have Mohammed Siraj, the world’s number one bowler. He has 53 wickets from his first 29 matches.

Overall, India has won the World Cup on two occasions. Their first came after victory against the West Indies in 1983 before winning this prestigious trophy again in 2011 after victory against Sri Lanka in that year’s Final.

Australia are five time winners of the World Cup having won it in 1987 (vs. England), 1999 (vs. Pakistan), 2003 (vs. India), 2007 (vs. Sri Lanka) and 2015 (vs. New Zealand). They are also one of the nations tipped to have a good chance of winning the tournament this year, and in the most recent World Cup, Mitchell Starc took six more wickets than any other bowler with an excellent average of 18.59.

Pakistan, South Africa and New Zealand are also nations that are seen to have a good chance of tasting glory.

There are a total of 5 World Cup matches taking place this week, and they are as follows:

• Thursday 5th October: England v New Zealand (09:30 start)
• Friday 6th October: Pakistan v Netherlands (09:30 start)
• Saturday 7th October: Bangladesh v Afghanistan (06:00 start)
• Saturday 7th October: South Africa v Sri Lanka (09:30 start)
• Sunday 8th October: India v Australia (09:30)

Excitement is building ahead of this year’s World Cup, with some of the best national teams in the world going head-to-head for glory in India.

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