Watch: T20 World Cup 2024: What went wrong in the matches held in USA

An analyis of the group stage matches held in the USA in the ICC T20 cricket World Cup 2024

In this video, we will analyse the group stage matches of the ICC T20 World Cup 2024, jointly hosted by the West Indies, and the USA, for the first time. But we will focus only on the USA league matches.

Having seen several high-scoring games in the recently concluded IPL, it was expected that the T20 World Cup would start off with a bang.

When the ICC awarded the hosting rights, their intentions were clear that they were interested in developing cricket in USA. But things didn’t turn out as expected. The matches held in USA were mostly low-scoring games. Some matches were well defended, and some went down to the wire.

In the group stages, there were only three instances of teams passing 200, and all were in the West Indies. In the USA leg, the highest score recorded in New York, was just 137. In some matches, scores of 116 and 120 were defended well due to the uneven bounce, which made it very hard for batters to settle.

The drop-in pitches from Adelaide in Australia made it difficult for the batters to score freely and the bowlers dominated the scene.

Some teams were bundled out for less than 100, but even those scores were chased down labouriously. The India-Pakistan match was another such low-scoring game where India defended just 119.

The ICC took a big gamble by not adequately testing the pitches or the conditions before such a huge tournament like a T20 World Cup. The pitches should be prepared in a way that there should be a battle between bat and ball.