From an English perspective it is difficult to imagine that a World Cup could rival that of 2019. From the remarkable bust-to-boom of Eoin Morgan’s team in the four-year lead-up, to the most thrilling conclusion to a tournament ever witnessed in the final at Lord’s, and the way a home triumph gripped a nation and spilled into an iconic summer of cricket, so much seemed to slip so neatly into place.
But should this England side, now led by Jos Buttler but still containing eight of those central to the 2019 success and still playing the Morgan way, go on to defend their title in the cricketing cauldron that is India over the next six weeks, it will rank as their greatest achievement.
This generation - of Buttler, Ben Stokes, Joe Root & Co. - will already be remembered as that which transformed the country’s white-ball standing from one-day wasters to the format’s pioneers, but by joining legendary West Indies and Australian outfits of yesteryear as the only sides to win successive World Cups, they would enter a rarefied pantheon of era-defining teams.
Nothing of such magnitude comes easy. For a team supremely talented but undoubtedly beyond its physical peak there is the small matter of a nine-match, round-robin to negotiate, spread across eight cities and thousands of miles, before the tournament’s top four progress to the semi-finals next month and can turn serious attentions to winning it.
Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand and South Africa all carry realistic hopes, but the rightful favourites are the hosts, for whom this is a competition of seismic importance on two fronts. The first is sporting: India is a nation of unrivalled passion for the cricket but also unrivalled resource that has fluffed its lines in going more than a decade without a world title in any format. The second is political: the country’s populist leader Narendra Modi has seized upon the national obsession, bestowed his name upon the stadium that will host the final and has a clear eye on success as a boon for a government that will seek re-election next year.
There are bigger-picture forces in play within cricket, too. The 50-over game is in a state of irreversible decline, the World Cup still for now the sport’s most prestigious event but the format’s long-term existence in danger as it is squeezed to the margins by an explosion of T20 franchise leagues.
Suggestions that this could even be the last World Cup are probably extreme, given the next one in 2027 is already inked in, but the game’s landscape has changed so much over the last two years that predicting what that tournament will look or feel like in another four seems a fool’s errand. Better for now, then, to sit back and enjoy.
