2023 Cricket World Cup

India alone

India had shared three World Cups with its neighbours, and in October and November 2023 it hosted one alone for the first time, across ten grounds from Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills to Chennai on the coast. The ten-team league of 2019 was repeated: every side played the other nine, and the top four went to the semi-finals.

Qualification told its own story. West Indies, champions in 1975 and 1979, failed to reach a World Cup for the first time, losing to Scotland and the Netherlands at the qualifying tournament in Zimbabwe. Sri Lanka and the Netherlands took the last two places, the Dutch returning after twelve years away. Across six weeks, around 1.25 million people attended, a record for the tournament.

The opening match set the tone for the batting. New Zealand chased England's 282 in Ahmedabad for the loss of one wicket, with Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra, a 23-year-old playing his first World Cup, both making hundreds. The scoring never really slowed. In Delhi, South Africa made 428 for five against Sri Lanka, the highest total in World Cup history, with three centuries in the innings, and forty hundreds were scored across the tournament.

A bad start for Australia

Australia, five times champions, looked like an ageing side in their first two matches. India beat them by six wickets in Chennai, where Kohli and KL Rahul rescued India from two for three, and South Africa beat them by 134 runs in Lucknow. After two games they were near the bottom of the table.

Then they won, and kept winning. Warner made a hundred against Pakistan in Bengaluru, and in Delhi against the Netherlands, Glenn Maxwell reached a hundred from 40 balls, the fastest in World Cup history. Travis Head, who had broken his hand before the tournament and missed the first five matches, returned in Dharamsala and made a hundred against New Zealand in a match Australia won by five runs, 388 to 383.

Afghanistan arrives

The team that captured the tournament's imagination was Afghanistan. Winless at the 2019 World Cup, they beat England, the defending champions, by 69 runs in Delhi, with their spinners Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi bowling England out. They then chased 283 to beat Pakistan in Chennai for the first time in any one-day international, beat Sri Lanka in Pune and the Netherlands in Lucknow, and reached the last week of the league with a real chance of a semi-final.

They were not the only upset. The Netherlands beat South Africa by 38 runs in Dharamsala. England, who came in as champions, won only three matches and finished near the bottom. And in Delhi, Sri Lanka's Angelo Mathews became the first batter in international cricket to be given out timed out, after a problem with his helmet strap delayed him in taking guard against Bangladesh.

Maxwell in Mumbai

On 7 November, Afghanistan played Australia at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, needing a win to stay firmly in the race. Ibrahim Zadran made 129 not out, Afghanistan's first World Cup hundred, and they set 292. Australia collapsed to 91 for seven.

What followed is one of the great innings in the history of the game. Glenn Maxwell was dropped on 33, and then, as cramp took hold of his legs and back, he stopped running and stood almost still at the crease, hitting boundaries from where he was. At times he could barely walk between overs. Pat Cummins blocked at the other end for 12 from 68 balls in an unbroken stand of 202, and Maxwell finished the match with a six, 201 not out from 128 balls. It was the first double hundred in a one-day international chase. Australia were through to the semi-finals, and Afghanistan's chance was all but gone.

Nine out of nine

India won every one of their nine league matches, and most of them easily. Their bowling was the best in the tournament. Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj took wickets with the new ball, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja controlled the middle overs, and Mohammed Shami, who did not play in the first four games, took five wickets in his first match and kept taking them. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 55 in Mumbai and South Africa for 83 in Kolkata, on Kohli's 35th birthday, the day he made his 49th one-day hundred to equal Sachin Tendulkar's record.

Two semi-finals

The first semi-final, at the Wankhede on 15 November, was a rematch of India's defeat by New Zealand in 2019. Kohli made 117, his 50th one-day hundred, passing Tendulkar in front of him in the stands, and Shreyas Iyer hit 105 from 70 balls. India made 397 for four. Daryl Mitchell made 134 and Kane Williamson 69, and for a while New Zealand were in the chase, but Shami took seven for 57, the best figures by an Indian in a one-day international, and India won by 70 runs.

The next day at Eden Gardens, South Africa were 24 for four against Australia in overcast conditions. David Miller made 101 to lift them to 212. Australia's chase wobbled against the spinners, but Head made 62 from 48 balls, and they got home by three wickets.

Head in Ahmedabad

The final on 19 November drew 92,453 people to the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Cummins won the toss and, against most expectations, chose to bowl on a slow, dry pitch. Rohit Sharma raced to 47 from 31 balls, but after he fell India's innings slowed to a crawl. Kohli made 54 and Rahul 66 from 107 balls, and the boundaries all but stopped. Starc took three wickets and Cummins two, and India were all out for 240.

Australia were 47 for three in the seventh over, and the crowd was loud. Then Head, with Marnus Labuschagne at the other end, took the game away. As the evening dew made the ball harder to grip and the pitch easier, Head made 137 from 120 balls and put on 192 with Labuschagne, who made 58 not out. Australia won by six wickets with seven overs to spare, and a crowd of more than ninety thousand fell almost silent.

It was Australia's sixth World Cup, from a start of two defeats. Head was player of the match. Kohli, with 765 runs, the most ever in a single World Cup, was player of the tournament, and Shami, with 24 wickets, the leading wicket-taker. India had won ten matches in a row and lost only the last one. The story of the tournament continues with the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia; every edition so far is listed on the World Cup history page.