The Indian cricket team may be ranked number 1 in the world across all formats, but such a position in the ICC charts matters little to former batsman Gautam Gambhir. With the mission for the Indian team being to reach the ODI World Cup this year, Gambhir believes that to win the showpiece event, the team must beat Australia as they have a remarkable history of performance in ICC events. Australia, the most successful team in the history of the 50+ World Cup, automatically starts as one of the favorites. However, Gambhir is hopeful that the Indian team can gain the upper hand.
During a special show of Star Sports ‘Mission World Cup’, 2011 Cricket World Cup champion Gambhir highlighted the crucial importance of beating Australia in the tournament.
“Look, I’ve always said this, and there’s no doubt about it, that if you want to win the World Cup, you have to beat Australia. When we won the World Cup in 2007, we beat Australia in the semi-final. When we won the World Cup in 2011 won the World Cup, we defeated Australia in the quarter-final. Australia is the strongest team in any ICC tournament. Remove the ranking, the ranking doesn’t matter,” he added.
As for the national winners, Australia has won the ICC ODI World Cup trophy five times, making them the most successful winning team. West Indies and India follow them in the World Cup winners’ cricket ODI.
Both teams have won the trophy twice each. England won the final World Cup tournament of 2019 and are the current champions of the trophy.
“You can be in any position in the rankings but Australia, when it comes to those big tournaments, the World Cups, I think Australia has the players, they have the confidence, Australia has the ability to play those big tournaments. moments really good. And you can see this: in the two World Cups that India won, we had to beat Australia twice in the knockout stages. And in the World Cups that we have lost, we lost to Australia in 2015. So I believe that If we have to win the World Cup this year, Australia will be the most important match and we will start against Australia, so there is nothing better than that. So beating Australia is very, very important,” Gambhir further said.
Former Australian batsman Shane Watson also spoke about who he thinks will make it to the final of the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
“I’m definitely going to back Australia with the caliber of players they have. They’ve certainly got a few question marks going into this World Cup, with a few positions and some injuries they’ve had, but the players they’ve got certainly know that .” how they can take a step further in these big competitions. And India, being at home, know the conditions better than anyone, their bowlers are clearly on fire at the moment, with their quick performances, and also Kuldeep Yadav who is just getting better and better So India can with their firepower, especially with their top class in particular, definitely going to the extreme. So for me, Australia and India would be an incredible final,” said Watson.
India’s last assignment before the World Cup at home will be a three-ODI series against Australia with the first match taking place on Friday. After this, they will play World Cup warm-up matches against England (September 30) and the Netherlands (October 3). India will then start their World Cup campaign on October 8 against the Aussies in Chennai.
With ANI inputs
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