India and New Zealand prepare for World Cup 2023

The 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup is almost a year away and already there’s a buzz in the air about the competition.

India, next year’s hosts, will be keen to put on a big performance before their home crowd. But other nations, like New Zealand, will be determined to put a dent in their hopes and claim glory for themselves.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at how both India and New Zealand will be preparing for the upcoming World Cup. But first, let’s take a look at how the competition works.

About the ICC Cricket World Cup

The Cricket World Cup is organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The 2023 edition will be the 13th Cricket World Cup.

The ICC World Cup is a one-day international tournament (ODI). This is a specific type of cricket that places a limit on the number of overs (50) each team gets, thereby ensuring the match is finished in a single day.

The ICC World Cup takes place every four years and 2023’s competition is being held in India during October and November. The reigning champions are England, who won it in dramatic fashion against New Zealand in 2019.

Just 10 teams feature in the contest. The qualifiers are determined by the outcome of the 2020-2023 ICC Super League tournament. The top seven teams in the league qualify for the World Cup. Additionally, the host team automatically qualifies. The remaining positions are determined by a World Cup Qualifier – two teams go through to the World Cup.

So far, the qualifying teams include Zimbabwe, India, Australia, New Zealand, England, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Betting on cricket

Below, you can find just a handful of betting options for cricket fans. Lots of guidance has been published on Cricket Betting Advice to help anyone interested in making a bet through a sportsbook.

Given its huge popularity, it’s not surprising that so many people love betting on cricket. If you’re one of them, you may be aware of the various types of bets you can make. To the uninitiated, they include:

• Who will win – you can make simple bets to back the outright winner of a match, a series or a competition such as the ICC World Cup.
• Over/under bets – with this type of bet, you can back whether a team will score over or above a certain number of runs, or if they’ll lose or retain a certain number of wickets.
• First over bets – this specific type of betting allows players to back potential outcomes in the first over (which is the first six balls of the match). You could bet that one team will take a wicket, or that the other team will score some runs.

India’s preparations

Although the 2023 World Cup is still some way off, we can get an idea of how two of the favourites, India and New Zealand, are doing in the run-up to the big competition.

Something that can give us a bit of an insight is the Twenty20 (T20) World Cup that was recently held in Australia. India and New Zealand both took part, and although the game is quite different in that it’s shorter (each team has just 20 overs to bowl), it’s not massively dissimilar to ODI cricket, especially when comparing it to Test cricket, in which matches are played over several days.

India had a very good tournament, reaching the semi-final. Along the way, they beat fierce rivals Pakistan by four wickets, as well as Bangladesh by five runs. They also crushed World Cup qualifiers Zimbabwe by 71 runs.

However, in the semi-final against England, they floundered. England destroyed India by a huge 10 wickets to coast through to the final.

If India is to win the 2023 World Cup, they’ll need to step things up more than somewhat.

New Zealand’s preparations

New Zealand was beaten by England in the final of the last ICC World Cup, thanks to a mix of luck and heroics from Ben Stokes.

In recent months, they’ve also performed well on the world stage. In the most recent T20 World Cup, New Zealand reached the semi-final. They brushed aside hosts and strong contenders Australia by a whopping 89 runs. They also comfortably beat Sri Lanka but lost to eventual winners England by 20 runs.

They bounced back, though, and managed to battle their way to the semi-final where they were beaten by seven wickets by Pakistan.