Australia stand on the brink of an unprecedented feat in cricket. If they win the men’s T20 World Cup, between their men’s and women’s teams, they will hold every single major cricketing trophy.
They are the World Test champions, the reigning 50-over world champions across the men’s and women’s game, while the women also won their most recent T20 World Cup.
Mitchell Marsh will be the new captain of the side following a 12-month trial period, and he will be hoping his side can replicate what Pat Cummins achieved in the 50-over tournament in India less than a year ago. Despite the change of leadership there are few squad changes and the squad is built around a similar core of players to the ones who lifted the trophy in Ahmedabad.
Despite having just one win from the eight T20 World Cup tournaments so far, and that one itself a Covid-affected tournament held in Oman and the United Arab Emirates, Australia will be a force to be reckoned with. It will also be a swansong for David Warner, assuming his bruised finger sustained before the tournament recovers, as the Australian great prepares to play his final international.
Travis Head, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green and Marcus Stoinis have all been in action in the Indian Premier League, with Starc and Cummins playing in the final, which bodes well for their match fitness and preparation.
For the rest of the players, tournament preparation has been slightly stunted. Coaches had to take the field during their warm-up against Namibia as only nine players were available, but it did not stop the Aussies cruising to a seven-wicket win.
In the United States and the West Indies, they will undoubtedly be among the favourites, and with their momentum over the last few years, a difficult team for anyone to stop, especially when for many of them it could be one of their final ICC events.
India
India undoubtedly go into the tournament as favourites, although it has been a long time since they have won a global tournament, 11 years in fact since their 2013 Champions Trophy victory.
Looking down their line-up and it is hard to see any area of weakness, especially when Rishabh Pant has come back into the team to bat at number five and Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are still going strong. The team has such depth that there is only space for Shubman Gill as a travelling reserve, and Jasprit Bumrah is likely to be at his lethal best.
India seem to have moved past their disappointing defeat to Australia in the 50-over final in November in front of a partisan home crowd of 100,000, and cannot afford to slip up a second time.
England
Over half of England’s squad was in action at the IPL, including some who were unhappy at being called away for a series of rain-affected T20s against Pakistan, but the squad as a whole looks a little ill-prepared for the tournament.
Jos Buttler’s side will head off to the Caribbean as the defending champions, but a lot of their players will have just a couple of matches after months of being on the sidelines, or playing red-ball cricket for their counties.
Since November, England have played just six T20 matches, five less than Australia and 10 less than India, a far cry from their intense preparations of 10 matches in the build-up to the 2022 tournament which they went on to win.
There are more questions than answers for England however, with Buttler keeping wicket despite not having done so at the IPL in place of Salt, and the lack of match practice for the two quick bowlers in Mark Wood and Jofra Archer.
The tournament itself starts with a nod to history, the United States will play Canada in the first match of the tournament in a faint echo of the first-ever international cricket match played between the same two teams in 1844.
But it will be a side who has embraced the game’s newest format (aside from the Hundred) who will lift the trophy, and it will be a tough ask for anyone to stop Australia, although India will go into the tournament as favourites.
