Women's 20-20 World Cup 2023: Top 4 contenders for semi-finals of eighth edition

The eighth edition of the Women’s 20-20 World Cup is the eighth edition is set to begin tomorrow, Friday, the 10^th of February. The hosts South Africa Women will take on Sri Lanka Women in the tournament opener at the Newlands in Cape Town. Defending Champions Australia will be eyeing on to win the tournament for the third consecutive time.

Whereas the 2020 edition’s runners-up India will also try to end the jinx of a tournament win in the senior women’s World Cup. Apart from this, there are also a few teams who are looking very strong in contention for the knock-out round of the tournament.

With said that, here we’ll have a look at 4 teams who could make it to the semi-finals of the tournament; carrying on their brilliant performances of late.

Australia

The yellow outfits couldn’t make it to the final of the first edition of the Women’s 20-20 World Cup as it was the England Women’s team who won the inaugural title of the tournament and New Zealand was the runners-up in the 2009 edition. But just from the next edition in 2010, Australia started winning the World Cup title and ended up achieving a hat-trick of World Cup win before ending up as runners-up in 2016.

Later on, Australian women won the tournament for two consecutive times in 2018 and 2020 beating England and India respectively in the finals of tournament. So considering their dominance in the tournament, it would not be an exaggeration to assess that Australia could be the first team to enter the semi-finals of the tournament.

India

The senior Indian women’s team has performed brilliantly in the last couple of marquee international tournaments including the 20-20 World Cup and ODI World Cup as well. Although they haven’t won any edition of the World Cup so far. The women in blue delivered their best during the seventh edition of the 20-20 World Cup in 2020 as they made ended up as the runners-up in the tournament.

On the back of their recent performances in the shortest format of the game, the Indian women’s team can be dubbed as one of the semi-finalists for the 2023 edition of the Women’s 20-20 World Cup.

South Africa

South Africa Women’s team under the captaincy of star all-rounder Sune Luus will take on Sri Lanka in their tournament opener at the Newlands in Cape Town. They are coming up with an excellent win in the recent -concluded in the recently-concluded T20I tri-series defeating India in the final.

If South Africa continues their current run of form in the marquee international tournament in their own backyard, they are also highly in contention for the semi-finals of the eighth edition of the tournament.

New Zealand

New Zealand will play under the captaincy of veteran all-rounder Sophie Devine in the eighth edition of the Women’s 20-20 World Cup. New Zealand is coming off with a straight clean sweep win against Bangladesh women by a margin of 3-0 in the recently-concluded three-match T20I series.

Apart from their recent performances, the New Zealand women were also the runners-up in the first two editions of the women’s 20-20 World Cup. So, one can easily count on the Devine & co. to reach the semi-finals of the 2023 edition of the 20-20 World Cup.