The T20 World Cup officially gets underway today with England the defending champions after their memorable 2022 triumph over Pakistan in Australia.
Ahead of the latest tournament, Standard Sport’s cricket correspondent Malik Ouzia looks at three key storylines that could dominate in the West Indies and United States over the next month.
Spin to win?
Think West Indies cricket and the mind immediately leaps to the fast-bowling greats of the past.
The expectation of most teams heading into this tournament, though, is that in the games in the Caribbean at least, spin will play a major part (conditions at the new US grounds are more of an unknown).
Dry, low pitches will tire as the competition goes on, while the semi-finals will be at grounds in Trinidad and Guyana that are traditionally thought of as spin-friendly.
India’s captain Rohit Sharma has talked up the potential of playing as many as four spinners in his side, while Jos Buttler could have just as many options in his England XI should Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone edge out Sam Curran in the middle order.
IPL impact
The IPL’s controversial impact player rule has taken much of the credit or blame for sky-rocketing totals this spring, with eight of the top 10 scores in the competition’s history set this season.
The rule, which allows each team a substitution at the change of innings (effectively an extra specialist batter), is not in force at ICC events like the World Cup, but the regularity with which IPL teams have posted totals in excess of 250 will surely have a bar-raising effect.
On different surfaces, and in different conditions, it will be intriguing to see whether the world’s best batters, fresh from their IPL feast, turn up with the same ultra-aggressive approach — and, if so, whether they enjoy the same success.
Pre-seeding
Dead-rubbers are a frustrating enough element of tournament play without having them potentially written in by design.
That, however, is exactly what this World Cup’s organisers have done in pre-determining where the top seeded teams will play in the Super Eight phase if they get there, theoretically, in order to give travelling fans clarity over which island their side will play on.
England and Australia, for instance, know that if they are the teams to qualify from Group B, they will go through as B1 and B2, respectively, even if their finishing position is the other way around.
It means that so long as each of them beat Oman, Namibia and Scotland, the result of their meeting will have no bearing on who plays where or against whom in the next round.
