2015 Cricket World Cup Results

Over a month into the Cricket World Cup and the teams are already past the pool round and well into the knockout phase. In fact, there are only ten days left in the tournament, with the championship happening on March 29.

But who exactly made it past the group phase: as previously mentioned, unlike the rugby or soccer World Cups, there are only two pools in cricket. And four teams from each qualify for the knockout round.

Out of Pool A, the four teams in the knockout round are New Zealand — who is favored to make the finals — Australia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Now, England had a very disappointing World Cup, which many called a disastrous showing that was thoroughly embarrassing. The only teams they were able to beat were the equally atrocious Afghanistan and Scotland.

On the other side, Pool B was fairly close. Still, India dominated the group — they are also favored to make it to the finals — and the rest of the teams fought each other for seeding. Ireland nearly squeaked by, but despite beating West Indies, they were left out due to the tiebreaker. The other two teams to make it were the impressive South Africa and Pakistan: despite losing to India and Pakistan, RSA has had a great offensive showing — scoring the most points in the World Cup.

Now, the knockout works by taking each seed from the opposite pool and pairing them up accordingly. Obviously the two one seeds — India and New Zealand — are placed on different sides of the bracket, but they each play the four-seed of the opposite pool. So New Zealand takes on West Indies and India plays Bangladesh. On top of this, the opposite two seed is placed on the same side of the bracket: in easier terms, the semifinals could look like A2 and B1 or B2 against A1.

And currently, the first round has already gotten underway with South Africa easily defeating Sri Lanka 134/1-133: the one after the slash means that Sri Lanka only retired one of South Africa’s batters — or RSA only needed three batters to win. On the other side, India destroyed Bangladesh 302/6-193. Again, rules in World Cup Cricket state that an inning is finished after all ten batters are retired or 50 overs. India only needed 8 batters for their 302 points and Bangladesh barely responded with 193.

As for the final two matches , Australia takes on Pakistan on March 20 at 2 pm in Adelaide, which is 11:30 pm EST tonight. And New Zealand against West Indies is on March 21 at 2 pm in Wellington, which is 9 pm EST tomorrow.