Whisper it quietly, but after a winter’s worth of mess, a Cricket World Cup win could be on the horizon for England.
In T20 cricket, England are good, elevating hope for the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka. Their opening partnership of Phil Salt and Jos Buttler is quantifiably the best in the world; their middle-order, headlined by Harry Brook, who is in hot water over what was initially just a “terrible mistake” after an altercation with a nightclub bouncer. Brook was then forced to clarify his initial comments after failing to divulge that teammates Jacob Bethell and Josh Tongue were also involved, leading him to describe the ordeal as “a challenging period” in his career.
Beyond that star-studded middle order, fronted by Brook, England can boast a spin pairing of Liam Dawson and Adil Rashid that contains one good spinner and one great one.
They are not the favourites, with that tag sitting comfortably on the shoulders of India, who are by far and away the best T20 team in the world, but England can lay claim to being the best of the rest. In truth, behind India, who are co-hosting the competition, it is a mush of teams, all of whom can beat one another on their day.
“Tournament cricket isn't easy, we know that,” said England opener Phil Salt in the lead-up. “You need a bit of luck at the right time as well.
“I think everyone’s going to need a bit of luck to beat India. I think they are by far and away the strongest team in the World Cup… but I am really excited by the idea that we get to come up against them in a World Cup in their backyard.”
England's most recent T20 outing was a three-match series against Sri Lanka, where they ran out three-nil winners, meaning England have now won 10 of their last 11 matches, including their last seven in a row. A timeframe that includes them scoring over 300 against South Africa.
England’s weakest suit is their seam bowling, with Jofra Archer spearheading an attack that is most likely to be supported by Sam Curran and Jamie Overton. Archer is a world-class performer, and while Curran and Overton are excellent all-rounders, both struggled for control against Sri Lanka and conceded their runs at 13 and 11.4 runs per over, respectively.
With conditions expected to favour spin throughout the World Cup, England are banking on neither Curran nor Overton to be required to bowl their full allotment on many occasions.
England, who have won the T20 World Cup on two occasions, are in the same group as fellow two-time winners the West Indies, as well as Nepal, Scotland and first-time World Cup qualifiers Italy.
Scotland are a last-minute inclusion in the World Cup, gaining the place as the highest-ranked team not at the competition after Bangladesh pulled out of the tournament. A political storm that has dominated events leading up to the World Cup and will continue to be a talking point throughout the competition.
Politics
The idea that sport and politics don’t mix has long been nonsense, particularly in cricket. And with the 2026 T20 World Cup, we have reached a breaking point, with Bangladesh boycotting the competition and Pakistan refusing to play their game against India.
You can trace back to a number of points of origin to explain how this started. One of which is when Bangladesh's star seamer Mustafizur Rahman was removed from the Kolkata Knight Rider’s (KKR) IPL squad on instruction from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).
No official reason was given by the BCCI for why the decision had been made, with citations only to “recent developments” and “deteriorating diplomatic ties” between the two nations. These appeared to reference events of a month earlier, where a Hindu man in Muslim-majority Bangladesh was accused of blasphemy and beaten to death by a mob.
India’s ruling party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), is a conservative party whose policies adhere to a Hindu nationalist ideology. Members of the BJP subsequently labelled the owner of KKR, Shah Rukh Khan, who is a Bollywood superstar and arguably the most famous Muslim in India, as a “traitor” for signing a Bangladeshi player.
Links between the BJP and BCCI are common. Current India head coach Gautam Gambhir was formerly a Member of Parliament for the BJP, and the largest cricket stadium in India, where the World Cup Final is scheduled to be played, is named after the current sitting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Following Rahman’s removal from the KKR squad, Bangladesh requested that all their World Cup matches be rescheduled from India to Sri Lanka, who are co-hosting the competition, citing security concerns. However, the ICC (International Cricket Council) deemed there to be no “credible security threat” and rejected Bangladesh’s request.
Bangladesh believed this to be double standards and that India, who successfully lobbied the ICC to have their Champions Trophy matches rescheduled from Pakistan to the UAE last year, were receiving preferential treatment.
The current Chairman of the ICC is Jay Shah, who, from 2019-2024, was the head of the BCCI and whose father is the Minister of Home Affairs in the BJP.
Following India’s matches in the Champions Trophy being rescheduled last year, India and Pakistan signed an agreement that the two countries would play at a neutral venue whenever one of them hosts an ICC event.
For this year’s competition, Pakistan, in support of Bangladesh, have chosen to boycott their match against India, but will participate in the rest of the tournament.
India v Pakistan is by far the most commercially lucrative fixture in the world of cricket, and the absence of this fixture will have serious financial ramifications for the world game.
“It is a real crisis,” said former England captain Michael Atherton on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast. “And fundamentally, in the end, it might be a crisis that the game needs to shake it out of its stupor.”
Nasser Hussain, on the same podcast, added: “I actually quite like Bangladesh sticking to their guns; they stood up for their player. And I quite like Pakistan sticking up for Bangladesh, and I know it’s political, but at some stage someone’s got to say enough with this politics, can we just get back to playing cricket?”
The cricket begins on Saturday.
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