THE 2023 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup is just around the corner, and will see 10 teams from across the world battle it out in South Africa to be crowned World Champion for another three years.

The lineup of countries for this tournament is largely the same as it was back in Australia three years ago, with only Ireland entering the fray, replacing Thailand.

It goes to show how set the world order in women’s cricket has been for a number of years, but that’s not to say there are not a number of nations that would like to change that narrative.

Australia comes into this tournament as the heavy favourite, but the frontrunners cannot afford to rest on their laurels as sides like India continue to make improvements in leaps and bounds, and are consistently biting at their heels.

That begs the question for sides like India of whether they can finally bridge that gap and end the Australian domination. The Indians have been the runners up in the past two world T20 tournaments (the 2020 World Cup and 2022 Commonwealth Games), so they look the side most likely to do it.

There are also several other questions leading into this tournament which will keep fans intrigued:

• Will South Africa regret omitting Dane van Niekerk?
• Will New Zealands’s Sophie Devine recover from injury in time?
• Will Ireland finally take that next step and match it with the top countries?

The 10 competing countries have been split into two groups for the initial pool stage. Both are fairly even groups, but it is also fairly easy to predict who will progress to the semi finals.

Group one consists of Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka. It is likely that Australia tops the group and New Zealand should also progress, but South Africa is also in with a shot of progressing, especially if the Kiwis have a bad tournament.

Group two, on the other hand, is a little more even, but is still relatively straightforward when it comes to predicting who will progress.

This group hosts England, India, Ireland, Pakistan and the West Indies, with England and India the likely top two. Ireland will try and push them as hard as possible and if they play like they did against the Australians in the warm up game could cause quite the stir.

The tournament gets underway tomorrow morning Australian time, and Aussie fans can watch the whole tournament on Kayo.

Team by team previews

Australia
Bangladesh
England
India
Ireland
New Zealand
Pakistan
South Africa
Sri Lanka
West Indies

Day 1 action

7pm local time (4am tomorrow AEDT) – South Africa vs Sri Lanka