How The Best Teams Compare

A look at how the biggest guns in the World Cup stack up

- Abhishek Mukherjee

The World Cup has become somewhat monotonous since the surge of Australia in the late 1990s. While the West Indies had won the first two editions, four new champions emerged in the next four editions. But since 1999, there has been no new champion. Australia has won four of these five editions, with India disturbing the trend briefly in 2011. Australia and India are rank favourites this time, along with England. South Africa and New Zealand are contenders for the semi-finals as well. Once that happens, two wins are all they need to lift that title. Three of these five teams have never won a World Cup. There are also West Indies and Pakistan, two sides reputed for picking up momentum out of nowhere and carrying on till they end up winning. Let us summarise how the main sides stack up.

ENGLAND

Strength: Power hitters

Weakness: Lack of strike bowlers

England had done some introspection since their disastrous 2015 World Cup campaign. They adopted a strategy of building a batting line up consisting of a bottomless queue of power hitters, even if that meant a compromise on bowling strength. In one blow, they did away with Ian Bell and James Anderson, at that point the leading run-scorer and wicket-taker in their history.

It worked. England have won 62 ODIs and lost 30 over this phase, which gave them a win-loss ratio of 2.066, the highest in the world. They have also scored at 6.17 (309 per innings) since then. To provide perspective, South Africa comes next, with 5.88. On the flip side, they have conceded 5.78 an over, the third worst over this period.