The One Day world cup has served as a four year cycle where Fans have been braced themselves to say goodbye to their beloved stars while countries have planned their calendar and succession cycle . They have also tended to be seismic events for the Countries (1983 for India, 1996 for Sri Lanka, 1999 for Australia,2015 for England). Now we are on the cusp of another world cup which might be more important than any of its predecessors. My own prediction is that this will probably be the best ever world cup ever. My reasons are listed below

1. It is being played in India India has long been the spiritual and commercial home of Cricket. It has reached the stage where both cannot exist without the other. But also the only country to provide a variety of conditions. We tend to think of Indian pitches being spin friendly and sure enough Chennai and Lucknow will provide that but Dharamshala with strong winds and overcast and foggy weather will mimic the English conditions. Mohali with true and fast bounce will play like pitches in Australia. Kolkata with its slow and low bounce will be like playing in the Caribbean islands. India not only provides a sure shot sell out audience and raucous crowd support to all teams. This guarantee an atmosphere like no other in the cricketing world. In fact watching a live India Pakistan cricket match is on the bucket list of many fans.
2. Close Matches- Lots of them For a world cup to be great there have to be a lot of close matches. We have 3 equal favorites in India Pakistan and England with Antipodal cousins of Australia and New Zealand as genuine contenders. South Africa Sri Lanka are the dark horses. Afghanistan and Bangladesh have been given grounds which will favor their spin bowling attack. Add to this the absence of minnows(except Netherland), and we are in for a lot of close and hard fought contest, with hardly any match which is not significant. So which matches are the one you should apply for sick leave? well India Pakistan is an obvious contender but most of their clashes are one sided, I feel India Australia clash and England South Africa clash will be close nail biting stuff with high quality of cricket on display. For a needle clash look no further than Bangladesh and SriLanka(get the ‘nagin dance’ going).
3. The favorites will stumble before making it. Like for Pakistan in 1992 and Australia in 1999 the eventual winner will need to be down and out and then recover miraculously for compelling viewing. Even in 2019 England’s loss to Sri Lanka was a stumble before they scampered through to the knock out stages. This World Cup we can expect each of the favorites and contenders to stumble before recovering because of one reason- the amount of one days played in last four years. In the three years prior to the World Cup in 2019, Full Member countries played nearly three times as many ODIs as T20s. And even with the large amount of domestic T20 cricket being played, most of the players in the 2019 World Cup had faced or bowled more balls in 50-over cricket than in 20-over cricket. That stands in stark contrast to the last four years, when events have conspired to invert that ratio- First came the Covid pandemic, which shut down cricket all over the globe and in order to get the lost revenue and get cricket back up and running, most national cricket boards prioritized their income-generating T20 leagues ahead of other forms of cricket. At the same time, international teams were pivoting fixtures towards T20 internationals in preparation for the scheduled World Cups in 2020 and 2021. The first of those tournaments, in Australia, was pushed forward to 2022, meaning teams spent three full years in T20 World Cup preparation mode; The combined effect was to drastically alter the balance of white-ball cricket played by the world’s best players, tilting it towards 20 overs and away from 50-over cricket. Take the example of the last world cup semi finalist- Australia, England, India, New Zealand- had played on average 72 T20 matches and 68 ODIs in the period from the end of the 2015 World Cup until the 2019 tournament. In the last four years, those players have averaged 81, T20s and just 24, ODIs. Most teams are going to arrive at this World Cup with a lot less knowledge of where ODI cricket currently is, than they have had at every recent tournament. So expect even the favorites to look rusty and out of sorts before finding their groove. That being said the winning team is likely to be the one that quickly and successfully overcomes this lack of understanding and finds the right balance of techniques and tactics for the situation.
4. Underdogs who will not only bark but also bite Sri Lanka are the underdogs who have the potential go all the way a-la India ’83 or Sri Lanka ’96. Sri Lanka is a young team on its way up and are capable of defeating anybody on their day. Add to them Bangladesh and Afghanistan who are playing in Chennai and Lucknow where their spinners are capable of upsetting the best teams and every match is a potential heartbreak for the big teams. For the world cup to be great there have to be at least one great upset , but this one could have more than one.
5. Huge totals with unbelievable run rates I know good matches mean a good balance between the bat and ball but the landscape has changed for bowlers. This is the first World Cup for some time that will be played with no major rule changes to the ODI format. In the 2011 tournament in India, teams were wrestling with three powerplays per innings, including both a batting and a bowling powerplay that the two teams could choose when to deploy. Playing with only one ball brought reverse swing into the equation in the second half of the innings, and white-ball cricket was full of “mystery” off spinners who could turn the ball sharply in both directions. By 2015 we were playing with two new balls and a maximum of four fielders outside the ring throughout. And in the six months prior to the tournament, an ICC crackdown on suspect bowling actions had removed many of the world’s most effective/mystery spinners from proceedings. These changes sent scoring rates through the roof, particularly at the end of the innings. In 2019, the batting powerplay was dispensed with, and five fielders were allowed outside the ring for the last ten overs. Scoring rates became more even through the course of the innings, and wrist spinners became the main purveyors of mystery spin, filling the gap left by the outlawed doosra bowlers. In 2023 though, the basic format of 50-over cricket has now remained unchanged for over eight years, an unprecedented period in its recent history. (It’s still five fielders outside the ring in the death overs.)And yet, the 2023 version of ODI cricket is unlikely to look like the 2019 model. Although the 50-over rules have stayed the same, the experience of being a white-ball cricketer has changed enormously in the period between the World Cups. When one day started most players played more first class cricket than one day. So One day evolved as a more aggressive form of test cricket. But now most players having played more T20 will see One day as longer version of T20.Not too far back a maiden for bowlers was an achievement but now they count dot balls as an achievement. So expect fearless batting, a few totals upward of 450 or maybe even 500, but also expect some total way less than par(remember Sri Lanka in Asia Cup Final). The unpredictability will only add to the drama.
6. This might be the last world cup which would seem important.  Not since the 1970s and Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket has the game been in a position of greater flux. No one can tell you confidently what professional cricket, and in particular international cricket, will look like in three or four years’ time. There are ageless structures and traditions of the game that a few years ago were permanent and fixed, that could disappear tomorrow and it would surprise nobody. The inevitable force of T20 expansion is gobbling up the established order. And of all the formats, ODI cricket seems the most vulnerable. For me, a Test match is like a novel; you live alongside it for a few days. Picking it up, putting it down, coming back to it periodically. Its narrative weaves itself into your thoughts and and leaves something for the rest of your life. The various narrative arcs have ample time to wax and wane. By contrast T20 cricket is more like a film or a play. Like a football or rugby match, you watch it largely in one sitting. The action is faster, more compressed, the storylines simpler and shorter, if no less compelling. But One day cricket can be the best of both worlds, combining the intensity of T20s with the complexity of Tests. Or it can be the worst of both formats, too long to be watched in one sitting. Sometimes with the result decided early on, and no draw to hold out hope for the underdog it tends to meander, especially in a mismatch. ODIs seem to offer nothing unique that the other formats don’t do better. To be clear, the World Cup is not going anywhere for now. All the nations have signed on for two more tournaments over the next eight years. But given how swiftly the game’s calendar is changing, how the priorities are shifting for its players, how international cricket is being edged out, this may well be the last time a World Cup is as big a deal in the game as it is now, where the best players prioritize it over other concerns. The last time it is the World Cup as we have known and loved it over the last 48 years. So watch this one with a lump in your heart because there might not be one like this one again.

So what are my prediction for Winners? Like stated above it is hard to look beyond India England and Pakistan, but I feel this might the year when South Africa finally breaks through. South Africa has the best middle order with a strike rate of 134 well above everybody else. But my prediction is based on something else.

Be it Steve Jobs or Bill gates there are numerous examples of persons learning from failures. By failing repeatedly, and picking themselves each time, they lost their fear of failure. The shark in Jaws is scary only while it remains unseen. The moment that big rubber robot rears up onto the boat, it becomes knowable and banal. Failure had become familiar to these tycoons, and so, free of its fear, they took enormous risks with enormous amounts of money and won more than lost. For them failure was simply a chance to try again, and to do better the next time.

Have the Proteas reached that point? Have they become familiar enough with failure to see its façade of terror fall away? Perhaps it has and I suspect that soon the c-word will lose its hold over their imaginations. It will annoy them, anger them, perhaps even depress them. But soon it will no longer frighten them. I hope that moment arrives in this World Cup. Chokers is a tag which has followed them in every world cup but I am afraid the word is being used like the mystical incantation “Hocus Pocus” is used

The story goes that the poor of medieval Europe pressed together at the back of cold cathedrals and strained to hear words that could bring them everlasting life. The bishops were standing far away, unreachable and unapproachable, specks glowing with gold and satin, but their words echoed off the stone arches and carried to the crowded doorway of the church. They uttered words saturated with power, resonating with magic and mystery, and the people carried them back to the farms and the villages to be whispered in prayer and used as weapons against evil and suffering. The words were: “Hocus pocus!”

What they actually heard was a Latin rite of communion: “Hoc Est corpus Meum”, or “This is my body.” To people unschooled in Latin and for whom religion and pagan magic were still deeply intertwined, “Hoc Est corpus ” was easily misheard as “Hocus pocus”; a prayer transformed into a totemic, magical piece of gibberish. That’s one theory, at least, for the origin of our most famous magical incantation. It’s a good story and it might even be true.

But the point is that we have a habit of using certain words and phrases without necessarily knowing what they mean or why we use them. I think we apply the word ‘Chokers’ on South Africa without really understanding the term and what it implies. There’s no denying that South Africans have found some particularly eccentric ways to leave the tournament, but do they regularly choke – that is, lose a vital game that is already mostly won? I’m not convinced, mainly because a choke implies a consistently excellent team suddenly becoming woeful. It has happened only once in 1999 semi final, and remember they did not lose.

The 2007 team, could only dream of being good enough to choke. Instead, in the opening rounds, they were beaten by Bangladesh, comprehensively beaten New Zealand, and used as starters to whet Australia’s appetite. South Africa’s exit from the West Indies wasn’t a choke. It was a mercy killing. Even the nadir of 2003 doesn’t quite qualify. Those who called for Pollock’s head as Choker-in-Chief had gotten it wrong: South Africa had it in the bag. Mark Boucher had had a winning total relayed to him and had duly put Muttiah Muralitharan into the stands for six, and then declined what he thought was an unneeded single. It was a staggeringly stupid mistake by the team, but being bad at arithmetic is not the same as choking on a cricket field. So the word chokers is being used for South Africa inappropriately and this might be the world cup when they break the myth. At least I am predicting it.

Whatever happens we are in for a heck of a world cup.