ICC World Twenty20 2016 Predictions – Who Will Be The Winners ?

ICC T20 World Cup 2016 will be taking place in India from 08 March-03 April 2016 and have top 8 test ranked teams automatically qualified for the super 10 stage while 2 more teams will join them after the first provisional round. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are currently ranked 9th and 10th respectively according to recent ICC test rankings which means they will play in the provisional round alongside 6 qualified teams (Ireland, Afghanistan, Scotland, Holland, Hong Kong and Oman)

Super 10 Round Predictions: I expect Afghanistan and Bangladesh to get through their respective preliminary groups and join super 10 group. In Super 10 group stage every team will play four matches and this is how I predict teams to finish in super 10. Group winners and runners-up will qualify for the semifinal where Group 1 Winners will take on Group 2 Runners-up and Group 2 Winners vs Group 1 Runners-up. Which means South Africa vs New Zealand Semifinal 1 and India vs England Semifinal 2.

Your thoughts ? I would love to hear from you about your predictions and which teams you see making it to the semifinals and why. Use the comments section below to shout your thoughts for what should be a cracking month of T20 cricket.

ICC Twenty20 Rankings – as of June 2015

RANKINGS	TEAMS	MATCHES	POINTS	RATINGS
1	Sri Lanka	13	1760	135
2	India	10	1244	124
3	Australia	16	1953	122
4	West Indies	17	1994	117
5	Pakistan	20	2277	114
6	South Africa	19	2084	110
7	New Zealand	16	1706	107
8	England	16	1653	103
9	Bangladesh	8	612	77
10	Scotland	6	426	71
11	Afghanistan	6	373	62
12	Netherlands	6	357	60
13	Ireland	6	340	57
14	Zimbabwe	7	334	48
15	Nepal	4		63
16	Hong kong	4		30
17	UAE	3		0

Of course these ranking go out of the window when teams play in the actual competition and it all depends which teams going into the world cup well prepared and in form. Sri Lanka’s being defending champions having won the competition in 2014 should feel they have a good chance of getting into the final against as they will be playing in familiar conditions in India.

While Pakistan, Bangladesh alonside India are also expected to perform better as the conditions suits them.  So the chances of a team from Asia winning the competition is alot higher for the T20 2016 world cup just like ICC 50 over world cup in Australia where both New Zealand and Aussies outplayed everyone else.

Historical Statistics of all Teams in T20 World Cups: Now lets take a look at all teams performances in the T20 world cups so far, starting from 2007 world cup to 2014.

Once the all 16 teams has been confirmed after the world cup qualifiers we will take a look at each and every sides strength and weakness. Predicting at this early stage is hard because alot of things change leading up to the world cup.

Although there is one interesting stat that out of the 5 T20 world cups so far only 1 host nation has reached beyond round 2 and that was Sri Lanka when they finished runner ups back in 2012. While None of the champions could defend their title on the 4 previous occasions.

I think in T20 cricket home advantage sometimes go against you as the expectations are higher and teams have more to lose at home. So India will have to play out of their skin to repeat their 50-over 2011 World cup win at home.

Thats the part 1 of our World Cup T20 Preview and Predictions, we will update this post once the ICC World cup qualifiers 2015 in Bangladesh are over and we have our final 16 teams for the 2016 World Twenty.