un this World Cup through the kind of ‘Super Duper Computer’ that tends to be roused for its predictions around this time in any tournament cycle, and you could bet your last IPL franchise dollar that it would pre-ordain India as champions.
No country has greater resources, be that talent or wealth. No team sits higher in the world rankings, a metric that, for all its flaws, is proven pre-emptive of success. No other group of players will benefit from home conditions, nor such raucous home support.
Yet, of course, no country, no team and no group of players will be under such crippling pressure to perform.
And how it has crippled. Since winning the 2011 edition as co-hosts, India have twice cantered into World Cup semi-finals, only to fall flat when faced with the jeopardy of a knockout contest for the first time. In T20 World Cups, a record of one final in seven editions since their inaugural triumph reads even more feebly. Across both formats, the path from impossible-to-ignore favourites to Irish goodbye is well-trodden.
Pakistan’s Cricket Team Arrived In India After Seven Long Years For The 2023 World Cup
So if — and it is a big if — if not them, then who? As defending champions, England look the next closest to a semi-final shoo-in, not quite the side that transformed the game in the run up to 2019, but burnished since then with even more clutch tournament know-how.
Pakistan, meanwhile, are ranked second only to the hosts and are probably in the same boat as far as motivation goes, the fires of cricket’s fiercest rivalry stoked latterly by India’s refusal to travel across the border during last month’s Asia Cup, then the visa delay that disrupted Babar Azam’s team in their preparations for this World Cup.
Australia have tournament pedigree in abundance, but contemporary concerns aplenty, too, having been well beaten in recent series by India and South Africa. They have lost key batter Travis Head to a hand injury for at least the first half of the tournament and, after a late squad rejig, arrive on the subcontinent with only one specialist spinner.
South Africa are in rather the opposite flux, beset by big-picture problems and burdened by decades of
World Cup underachievement but, right here and now, with every chance of firing. An in-form batting line-up with a watchable blend of class and power, coupled with a top-drawer seam attack even missing Anrich Nortje and decent spin stocks offer the usual potential for boom, should they, for once, swerve the bust.
New Zealand have lost successive finals, with the suspicion that those defeats represented twin peaks for this generation of players, rather than the final steps to the summit. Even so, the returns of Kane Williamson and Trent Boult could yet be enough to prompt another voyage into the business realm.
Home start: Shubman Gill is one of India’s team leaders, as well as being one of their big runscorers
/ AFP via Getty ImagesThose six look the likeliest semi-final contenders, Sri Lanka having been hit hard by injuries to their two most important bowlers, Wanindu Hasaranga and Dushmantha Chameera, and then demoralised by a hammering from India in the Asia Cup Final, when they were skittled for 50.
Even so, they, like Bangladesh, have the potential to be kingmakers in the round-robin format, as indeed Sri Lanka proved by almost derailing England’s hopes four years ago. Afghanistan, though light on runs, need not be the whipping boys that lost all nine matches in 2019, while Holland are rank outsiders, having qualified ahead of Scotland, Ireland, Zimbabwe and West Indies.
Really, though, this is a tournament headlined explicitly by the host nation, for whom even some of the oft-cited hindrances may have their influence on the wane.
True, that unmatched talent pool only goes so far when you can only pick XI, but unlike in recent, muddled campaigns, India appear to have settled on the right one. Led by Rohit Sharma but spearheaded by Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah covers off the final base in what looks a near-flawless side.
True, the magnetism of the IPL means some foreign players have spent almost as much time playing cricket in India as in their own back yard. But a tournament spread across seven weeks and 10 cities at a different time of year ought to throw up conditions alien even to frequent visitors.
For India, and hopes of a triumph that feels every bit as predestined as England’s four years ago, it is imperative that all leave empty-handed.
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