Cricket World Cup

Having watched my son’s Twickenham U15s cricket team play against Switzerland U-15s on 02 June and then attending a Cricket World Cup (CWC19) match at the Oval between Bangladesh and New Zealand on 05 June, I have felt inspired to write about the tournament and world cricket in general.

The world game, and the current tournament in England, is run by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Their stated goal and ambition is for cricket to become the world’s favourite sport – not sure how that can be measured but with the timings of the matches, the huge fan bases in the India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will be fully engaged. The Bangladesh fans at the Oval certainly made for a fantastic atmosphere.

The CWC19 involves the top 10 ranked One Day International (ODI) teams in the world so the likes of Ireland, Scotland, Zimbabwe and Nepal miss out with Afghanistan come to the party. Are Afghanistan the dark horses? 2 of their current players are in the top 3 rankings for all-rounders (players who bat and bowl with equal ability). Indeed both Bangladesh and Afghanistan have more bowlers ranked in the top 25 than England do!

England are the number 1 ranked side and favourites for the current tournament. They have 4 all-rounders in the top 20, and 5 batsmen.

The format of this tournament is different to the last one, held in and won by Australia. Each team will play against each other in matches scheduled to be 50 overs each side. After these round-robin matches, the top 4 teams will proceed to the semi-finals and the final taking place at Lords on 14th July.