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A World Cup of fast scoring, big wins, and no toss advantage

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A World Cup of fast scoring, big wins, and no toss advantage

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November 21, 2023February 12, 2023

A tournament of big wins

A total of 22 out of 48 games in the 2023 ODI World Cup were decided by a margin of 100-plus runs, or four-plus wickets and 60-plus balls to spare. Eighteen of the 22 matches were between the Full-Member teams.

The percentage of matches (45.83) with one-sided results in 2023 is the joint second-highest for the men’s ODI World Cup, behind the inaugural 1975 edition (53.33). The 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand also had 22 one-sided results in 48 games – the same as in 2023.

Teams batting first had big wins through the tournament. A margin of over 300 runs was achieved twice, a feat never seen before at the men’s ODI World Cup. The average margin of victory for sides batting first in non-reduced matches in this tournament was 134.68 runs, the highest for any World Cup.

No toss advantage

Only 19 out of 48 matches were won by the team that won the toss: the win-loss ratio of 0.655 is the second lowest for any edition of the men’s ODI World Cup. The lowest was 0.555 in 1979, where teams that won the toss won only five out of 14 matches.

In 42 day-night games, the team winning the toss won the game 16 times. In half of those 42 matches, the team that won the toss chose to bowl but were victorious only eight times. Teams that opted to bat also won only eight out of 21 games. In six day games, the team winning the toss chose to bowl on five occasions and went on to win three times.

Debutants go big

The 2023 World Cup was a tournament for World Cup debutants, especially batters, as they featured in the top run-getters’ charts. The first-timers Rachin Ravindra and Daryl Mitchell occupied the top two spots for New Zealand with 578 and 552 runs respectively. Shreyas Iyer made most of his maiden World Cup opportunity and finished seventh with 530 runs.

Before Ravindra, Mitchell and Iyer, the only batter to score 500-plus runs in his first World Cup was Jonny Bairstow (532 runs in 2019). Ravindra also became the first batter to score three centuries in his first ODI World Cup.

The top run-getters for Pakistan (Mohammad Rizwan – 395), Afghanistan (Ibrahim Zadran – 376), England (Dawid Malan – 404) and Sri Lanka (Sadeera Samarawickrama – 373) were all playing their first ODI World Cup.

Two of the top five wicket-takers were also playing their first World Cup – Dilshan Madushanka (21) and Gerald Coetzee (20). Madushanka was the star of a rather disastrous Sri Lankan campaign, and he contributed 42% of their wickets. Coetzee broke the record for most wickets for South Africa in the men’s ODI World Cup, while Marco Jansen equalled the previous highest.

Powering through the powerplay

The 2023 World Cup finished as the highest-scoring World Cup, with a run rate of 5.82, ahead of the 5.65 in 2015. The big totals in the first ten overs of the innings contributed significantly to the overall run rate. The run rate in the first ten overs in 2023 (5.52) was the highest of the seven World Cups since 1999, where ball-by-ball data is available. As much as 21.54 % of the runs in the 2023 World Cup were scored within the first ten overs, the second highest behind the 2003 edition (22.73).

The finalists were the fastest scorers in the first ten overs: India topped with a run rate of 6.97, while champions Australia came second, scoring at 6.5. Ninety or more runs were scored within the first ten overs on five occasions, including three times by India, in this tournament. Only twice had a team scored 90-plus runs in the first ten overs in the previous six men’s ODI World Cup editions.

More numbers from the World Cup

0 Number of matches in this World Cup to have lasted 100 overs. It was the first men’s ODI World Cup in which no game lasted the full quota of overs. The longest game was between Australia and New Zealand in Dharamsala, which lasted 99.2 overs.

New Zealand batted their 50 overs and fell six runs short of the target of 389. It is the only instance of the chasing team batting in the 50th over in this World Cup.

0 Hat-tricks for bowlers in this World Cup despite being on the verge of one on 19 occasions. The previous men’s ODI World Cup without a hat-trick was in 1996. As many as ten hat-tricks were taken in World Cups between 1999 and 2019, with at least one in all the six editions. Only one bowler had a hat-trick in the first six World Cups between 1975 and 1996 – Chetan Sharma in 1987.

4 David Warner and Mitchell Marsh became only the fourth pair to complete their centuries on successive deliveries in men’s ODIs (where ball-by-ball data is available). They did it during the 31st over of Australia’s league stage match against Pakistan. The other three instances are Michael Bevan and Steve Waugh against South Africa in 2000, Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir against Sri Lanka in 2009, and Tillakaratne Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara against Scotland in 2015.

201 Difference between the totals of Pakistan and New Zealand during their league stage match in Bangalore is the highest deficit to win an ODI match. The previous highest was 168 for West Indies in the 2006 Kuala Lumpur ODI, where they secured a 28-run win on the DL method after scoring 141 for 2 in 20 overs in reply to India’s 309 for 5.

20 Runs scored by Pat Cummins in his two partnerships with Glenn Maxwell in this World Cup, which aggregated 305 runs. They added 103 runs – Maxwell contributed 91 while Cummins contributed 8 – against Netherlands in Delhi. And then they put on an unbeaten 201-run stand against Afghanistan in Mumbai, of which Maxwell scored 179.