The 2023 Cricket World Cup is under way with Quinton de Kock hitting a second successive century to help South Africa beat Australia by 134 runs on Thursday.
The 30-year-old De Kock, who will be retiring after the World Cup, followed up his hundred against Sri Lanka with a 109 off 106 balls on an untested wicket in South Africa’s total of 311-7.
England’s defence of their crown got off to the worst possible start when they suffered a nine-wicket hammering at the hands of New Zealand. They got back on track on Tuesday, however, with a convincing 137-run victory over Bangladesh, thanks in the main to Dawid Malan’s 140 from 107 balls.
New Zealand followed their win over England with another decisive victory, beating Bangladesh by eight wickets. Kane Williamson (79) and Daryl Mitchell (89 not out) starred with the bat as one of the tournament favourites easily reached the victory target with over seven overs to spare.
One of the games of the tournament took place on Saturday, when arch-rivals India and Pakistan face each other in Ahmedabad where the hosts won by seven wickets. On Sunday, England face Afghanistan, who are coached by Jonathan Trott.
In the UK the 2023 World Cup is being broadcast live on Sky Sports Cricket.
There is also a daily highlights package shown at 7pm on Channel 5, which is free to air. That same highlights programme is available to watch back on Channel 5’s on-demand platform, My5.
This World Cup was originally slated for the spring of 2023, but the coronavirus pandemic messed up calendars, prompting the ICC to push it back by six months. England’s fixtures are in bold.
India are hosting the tournament despite a tit-for-tat dispute with Pakistan about tournament boycotts. India had threatened to boycott the Pakistan-hosted Asia Cup in September. In retaliation, Pakistan threated to boycott the India-hosted World Cup. That dispute was resolved by sharing the Asia Cup hosting rights between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. India’s games were all played in Sri Lanka.
At the World Cup, however, Pakistan will be playing in India. The round-robin match between the two sides will be held in Ahmedabad on Oct 14.
Only 10 teams are playing at the tournament. They are: India, who qualified automatically as the hosts, New Zealand, England, Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and South Africa, all of whom qualified based on their results in ODI cricket since the 2019 World Cup, and Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, who earned their place via a qualifying tournament this year.
Among the teams who failed to qualify are previous World Cup winners West Indies, plus Ireland and Zimbabwe.
The 2023 edition follows the schedule used at the 2019 edition: a round-robin stage, followed by semi-finals and a final. In the round-robin all 10 teams will play each other once. A victory will be worth two points and a tie or no result will be worth one point. The top four teams will qualify for the semi-finals, with the top-ranked team against the fourth-ranked team, and the second- and third-placed teams against each other.
The boundary countback rule, on the basis of which England won the 2019 World Cup final, has been dropped. From now on, if teams are tied in a knockout game and still tied after a super over, they will continue to play super overs until a winner is found.