The thirteenth edition of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket World Cup is underway in India, and billions of fans across the globe are tuning into the tournament. The ICC World Cup occurs every four years, the last one during the summer of 2019, in England. Every World Cup ten total teams compete to become world champions. All ten teams play each other once in the group stage, and the top four teams in the standings advance to the semifinals. The current defending champions of the world are England who won it on home soil in 2019. Now, a new team will be looking to win it all.
After the group stage concluding, India is the clear favorite to win the World Cup as they finished undefeated in the group, winning all nine games. Coming into the tournament, with them having home-field advantage many experts predicted India to win the World Cup.
“With the World Cup being in India this year, this is a really big advantage for India and it will help and motivate them to win more games,” freshman Faizan Mohammed said.
So far India’s bowling has been impressive. Teams when batting against India’s bowling lineup have struggled this tournament. India’s batting has also been superb as players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have been dominating.
“I would say that India has surprised me the most so far in this World Cup. Even though they were favorites they have struggled in these types of tournaments in recent years. They have remained undefeated and that is impressive,” senior Arvin Mungara explained.
India currently finds themselves in a great position and is looking to capitalize off of it as they have guaranteed themselves a spot in the semi-finals.
South Africa is another team that has caught the eye of many cricket fans around the world. They have a great batting lineup which has been guaranteed to score between three hundred and 400 hundred runs a game which is a very good score. They have been breaking batting records including a big one, which was the most runs in a game at an ICC World Cup.
“South Africa’s batting in this tournament has been very dominant. It is hard to beat them because every game they play they have a high number of runs and a lot of these totals are record-breaking,” senior Seshank Kondapally said.
England, the defending champions of this tournament, have not played well at all this year. On both sides, batting and bowling nothing is going well for them, as they finished the tournament with 3 wins and 6 losses.
“It has been surprising seeing how England has struggled this whole tournament. Many were saying that England along with India and South Africa was a favorite to defend their title and win the tournament,” freshman Faizan Mohammed commented.
With these defeats, England has been knocked out of the World Cup and will not advance to the semi-finals.
The matchups for the ICC Cricket World Cup semi-finals have been set as the top four teams in the group stage move on. First place India will take on fourth place New Zealand, and second place South Africa will take on third place Australia. The semi-finals will start on Wednesday, November 15th and the winners of the two games will play in the final on Sunday, November 19th.