My T20 Cricket World Cup Predictions

 by Attish Das

Previously, there have been 7 T20 World Cups, initially being won by team India in 2007 against Pakistan by only 5 runs in Johannesburg, South Africa. India had faced Pakistan earlier in the group stages of World Cup as well in a match that MS Dhoni’s team won through a bowl-out. Matthew Hayden’s tally of 265 runs was the highest for any batsmen in the tournament while Umar Gul’s seven wickets remained the most scalps for a bowler in the inaugural T20 World Cup. Two years later, Pakistan shook off the disappointment from their previous final loss to India to get their hands on the prestigious T20 title for the first time in 2009. They beat Sri Lanka by eight wickets in a comfortable chase in the final. Tillakaratne Dilshan was the highest run-getter with 317 runs in this edition while Umar Gul was once again the top wicket-taker in this version of the T20 world cup. After this, the following table shows the winners of the world cup since then.

Year	Winners	Runners-Up	Venue of the Final
2007	India	Pakistan	Johannesburg
2009	Pakistan	Sri-Lanka	London
2010	England	Australia	Bridgetown
2012	West-Indies	Sri-Lanka	Colombo
2014	Sri-Lanka	India	Dhaka
2016	West-Indies	England	Kolkata
2021	Australia	New-Zealand	Dubai

 

Using this table, we can see that West-Indies have won the most (2) World cups being followed by many countries at 1 title each, implying that the competition is very high, and is not one sided to any country. Again, the T20 world cup will be held again in Australia, the winners of last year’s cup. The table shows the groupings.

Group A	Group B
Namibia	Ireland
Netherlands	Scotland
Sri-Lanka	West-Indies
UAE	Zimbabwe

 

My predictions for the Group stages are that in Group A, the winner will be Sri-Lanka (putting the team into group 1) and the Runner up will be Namibia (putting the team into Group 2). The reasons for this are that Sri-Lanka has recently acquired the title of The Asia cup, beating both monsters India in the Super 4 and Pakistan in the final, therefore containing potential to do well. The fight for the place into Group 2 would be very tricky for all the teams as they all have similar capabilities; I have put Namibia into the runners up due to the fact that they went through the group stage last year. In Group B, in my opinion, will be tough for all teams except for West-Indies (ranked 7^th in the world) who will win followed by Zimbabwe, who recently had a comeback to cricket and had their first victory in a match against Australia.

This leaves these two groups for the Super 12:

Super 12, Group 1	Super 12, Group 2
Afghanistan	Bangladesh
Australia	India
England	Pakistan
New-Zealand	South Africa
Winner of Group A, Sri Lanka	Winner of Group B, West-Indies
Runner-up of Group B, Zimbabwe	Runner up of Group A, Namibia

 

After these Group Events take place, my predictions for the Semi-finals will be England being 1^st in their group (current ODI standing World Champion) and Australia being 2^nd in their group (current T20I standing World Champion); and in Group 2 India being 1^st (current T20I 1^st ranked) and South Africa (who played very well against India in their recent 3 match series. This would make the two Semi-Final matches being India vs Australia and England vs South Africa. From their previous playing history, I would say that India would win their semi final after their recent 3-0 series with Australia, hence I chose India. Following on from this, England and South Africa should have a very close matchup, however South Africa has a higher potential to go to the finals.

This leaves the finals to be between India and South Africa. India and South Africa have faced each other in 23 matches in T20. Out of these 23 games, India have won 13 whereas South Africa have come out victorious on 9 occasions out of which 1 match ended without a result. This would be set as a very competitive match as both teams would fight with all of their capabilities.

This is only my prediction, and anything could happen with all the best teams not using their strengths and being overconfident, so we will see what the outcome of the world cup will be from 16^th October 2022.