2024 T20 World Cup

A Dive Into What's Happened So Far. 

This year's World Cup was hosted by the US and West Indies. 2024’s World Cup kicked off on 2nd June with the host country winning by 7 wickets against rival Canada with Aaron Jones scoring 94 runs off a mere 40 balls. In the group stage, the home team upset Pakistan by qualifying under India for the super eights in Group A. Group B’s qualifiers were Australia and England, Group C’s West Indies and Afghanistan, and Group D’s South Africa and Bangladesh. 

Player Highlights

Virat Kohli, India’s superstar and arguably India’s best batsman ever, has been completely out of form scoring a mere 66 runs in 6 games (1, 4, 0, 24, 37, 0). This follows his recent orange cap season in the 2024 IPL, scoring 741 runs at an average of 61.75. Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya made a notable improvement from his poor IPL season taking 8 wickets and scoring 116 runs. Australia’s ex skipper Pat Cummins made history taking 2 hat tricks, back-to-back. 

Rishabh Pant made his comeback to international cricket following his life-threatening car accident back in 2022. Since, he has made a recovery where he had a stellar performance in the 2024 IPL season which seems to be continuing on into the 2024 T20 World Cup, scoring 167 runs. 

Super Eight’s

The next stage began with Phil Salt single-handedly dismantling the West Indies, scoring 87 (47). The West Indies then went on to take apart their co-hosts the US, winning by 9 wickets. Shai Hope scored 82 of 39 balls, and Saurabh Netravalkar, the hero of the group stage, went for an economy of 11. England then beat the US by 10 wickets, with opening batsman Jos Butler and Phil Salt being unbeaten. Butler scored 83 of 38. This put an end to the US’s commendable campaign, in their first ever cricket world cup. 

We then saw a rematch of the past two world cup finals in a must-win match for both title contenders: Australia and India. India’s skipper, Rohit Sharma, scored a blistering 92 off 41 deliveries, including a 29 run over against Australia quick, Mitchell Starc. This intentful innings served as a reminder to the rest of the world of the aggressive brand of cricket that India has been playing, for the last year, in the white ball format and will continue to play for the remainder of this tournament.

The next day, the hopes of all 4 teams in Group 1 making it to the next stage, hung in the balance of the fate of the Afghanistan and Bangladesh matchup. Afghanistan chose to bat first, posting a seemingly-innocuous total of 115 against a relentless Bangladesh bowling attack, that kept taking wickets at crucial junctures of the innings. Litton Das started the chase with attacking intent, but a few quick wickets in consecutive overs eventually led to Afghanistan’s victory, knocking Australia out of the cup.

MVP’s

So far, 899 4’s and 491 6’s have been hit. Afghanistan’s Rahmanullah Gurbaz tops the leaderboard with 281 runs. He is closely followed by Australia’s Travis Head with 255 runs. Shai Hope tops the Strike rate leaderboard with an SR of 187.71. 

On the bowling side, Afghanistan’s Fazalhaq Farooqi and Rashid Khan placed 1st and 3rd with 16 and 14 wickets respectively.