• The tournament was due to be held in 2020 but COVID-19 intervened.
• India should be one of the favourites for the tournament.
• Jos Buttler’s England take on South Africa in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.

On home soil and with strength across the board, Australia is poised to become the first team to win back-to-back T20 World Cups in a country that has long awaited the opportunity to host the global showpiece.

The tournament was scheduled to be held in Australia for the first time in 2020 but COVID-19 intervened, forcing the seventh edition to be held in the United Arab Emirates and Oman last year after being relocated from India.

Aaron Finch’s team of underdogs took the country’s first title from rivals who were more likely to win in the UAE. This was a good thing that didn’t happen in 2020.

A year later, Australia will be happy to have the chance to defend their title in front of huge crowds enjoying the spring sun and the glow of being done with COVID.

The 2014 winners, Sri Lanka, will start the tournament on Sunday in Geelong against a small African team called Namibia. This is the first match of the qualifying phase, where eight teams are fighting for four spots in the next round.

The Super 12s then start with a bang in Sydney on Oct. 22, when the hosts play New Zealand in a rematch of last year’s final.

With 14 of the 15 players from Australia’s winning 2021 team coming back, it will be hard to beat them at home.

But because T20 cricket is hard to predict, most of the 16 teams will think they have a good chance of making it to the semi-finals.

India, which has the best T20 team in the world, should be one of them, even though the injury to pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah was a big blow.

Their sold-out match at the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground against archrivals Pakistan, who were semifinalists last year, could be very important for both teams.

A fresh look England’s new captain, Jos Buttler, will try to keep up the high standards set by Eoin Morgan, who led the country to the knockout rounds in 2021 and turned them into a white-ball power.

South Africa didn’t make the semi-finals last year because Australia beat them on run rate, and they have a history of coming up short at international tournaments.

But they have fast bowlers who will do well on Australia’s bouncy wickets, and they have too much talent not to try again for the last four.

New Zealand will try to stop losing in the finals of the 50-over World Cup in 2015 and the 50-over World Cup in 2019.

But to do that, they might have to get rid of their demons against the hosts, who they haven’t beaten in Australia in any sport for more than a decade.

After four T20 World Cups in Asia, it will be important to change.

Purists may hope for a better balance between the bat and the ball than in the past, and the big grounds and long boundaries may give bowlers a break while putting more emphasis on fielding.

The International Cricket Council (ICC), which is the sport’s global governing body, will be proud of the numbers when a large number of people around the world watch the tournament in Australia before it grows to include 20 teams in 2024.

But its success could be a double-edged sword, with test cricket and one-day cricket fighting for relevance and new T20 leagues around the world putting pressure on the ICC.

[embedpost slug=”fakhar-zaman-replaces-injured-usman-qadir-in-t20-world-cup-squad/”]