Ever feel like you’re guessing when betting on tennis, cricket or golf? I make sense of the stats and trends so you can bet confidently and enjoy watching your bets play out.
2026 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Preview
The 2026 ICC Men's T20 World Cup will be a co-hosted tournament with India and Sri Lanka sharing hosting. Sri Lanka looked to host the tournament alone; however, due to the lack of stadiums, it was decided to co-host with India.
The group stages will kick off in February of 2026, and the tournament will run through until the final sometime in March. Will India retain their trophy and make it three wins to make them the outright most successful?
| T20 World Cup 2026 08 Mar @ 15:00 - Outright Winner | ||
|---|---|---|
| India | 2.38 | |
| Australia | 5.00 | |
| England | 6.50 | |
| South Africa | 7.00 | |
| New Zealand | 13.00 | |
The top seven teams from the 2024 tournament (excluding India) all receive an automatic berth for this tournament, meaning the following teams will appear at the 2026 T20 World Cup:
Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, South Africa, the United States and the West Indies.
The two hosting countries, India and Sri Lanka, get automatic places in the tournament, and the top three ranked teams (excluding those already in) also get automatic berths; those are Ireland, New Zealand and Pakistan.
The remaining eight places are made up of the qualifiers, three from the Asia-EAP (Nepal, Oman & UAE) qualifications, two from each of the African (Namibia & Zimbabwe) & European (Italy & Netherlands) qualifications and then one from the Americas (Canada) qualifications.
The Best Cricket Betting Sites 2026
ICC Mens T20 World Cup Tipster Competition
OLBG are delighted to announce we will be running a £100 FREE to enter ICC Men's T20 World Cup Cricket Tipping Competition, there is a £25 top prize with 15 cash prizes up for grabs!
The tournament will be co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka and gets underway on Saturday, 7th February and finishes with the final on Sunday, 8th March.
How to Play:
- Log in to your OLBG account.
- Make your picks on the Six Nations match markets.
- Add your reasoning and climb the leaderboard towards the cash prizes!
- Make sure you add 10+ tips with 5+ of those being profitable.
You will be able to track your progress and check the criteria needed on the tipster table. Good luck!
ICC Men's T20 World Cup Betting Tips
There are some great cricket tipsters on OLBG, and they will have you covered with their 2026 T20 World Cup Betting Tips throughout the tournament, with predictions on who will win outright and each match.
The first option is to head over to the Best Cricket Tipsters page, where we display the best cricket tipsters on OLBG. By best, we mean tipsters who have shown a profit over the past year for all of their cricket predictions. The page will only show tipsters who have open tips.
If you want to see more in-depth options, then head over to the Cricket Betting Predictions page. On this page, you will be able to see which outcomes are being most supported by the expert cricket tipsters for each game and the tournament outcome market, too.
In addition, you can click on each match to see much more. Each market and outcome available will be shown along with the number of tips on each outcome, and you can read the expert tipsters' thoughts on the games and their reasoning for why they have backed their prediction.
Also, if you haven't already, we are not sure why you wouldn't have! There have already been over a million downloads. Get the OLBG App installed and have all of those T20 World Cup predictions in one easy place to find.
Cricket Betting for Beginners: Your Ultimate Guide
ICC Mens T20 World Cup Favourite Statistics
As you can see below, favourites at the T20 World Cup can have a tendency to jump around from tournament to tournament. With a usual two years between tournaments, a lot can change in that time.
For example, the 2024 tournament saw 82.35% of favourites win, a high for this tournament, and when you compare that to two years earlier (2022), only 63.41% of favourites won.
That is a difference of 18.94% between the two tournaments, which is quite a difference, and those are the lows and highs in the history of this tournament, which have come at the last two tournaments!
| Year | Favourites | Winners | Win Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 27 | 18 | 66.67% |
| 2010 | 27 | 19 | 70.37% |
| 2012 | 26 | 19 | 73.08% |
| 2014 | 35 | 25 | 71.43% |
| 2016 | 33 | 24 | 72.73% |
| 2021 | 45 | 36 | 80.00% |
| 2022 | 41 | 26 | 63.41% |
| 2024 | 51 | 42 | 82.35% |
| Total | 285 | 209 | 73.33% |
ICC Mens T20 World Cup Top Performing Favourites
We have looked at the winning favourites as a whole at the tournaments, but what about teams when they are favourites? Who are the most reliable?
Top of the list is Pakistan, who have been priced up as favourites in 17 of their games, and they have gone on to win 15 of those games, which is an 88% win rate when favourites.
Sri Lanka are the only other team with a win rate of over 80%; they have a 26-6 record, which is a 81% win rate, whilst New Zealand are only just below this mark with 79% (15-4).
Australia are surprising, their record of 25-12 has seen them win just 68% of their games as favourites, just below India (70%) and England (72%), who in T20 cricket you would probably expect better win rates.
| Team | Games | W-L | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pakistan | 17 | 15-2 | 88% |
| Sri Lanka | 32 | 26-6 | 81% |
| New Zealand | 19 | 15-4 | 79% |
| Bangladesh | 13 | 10-3 | 77% |
| West Indies | 19 | 14-5 | 74% |
| South Africa | 33 | 24-9 | 73% |
| England | 32 | 23-9 | 72% |
| India | 40 | 28-12 | 70% |
| Australia | 37 | 25-12 | 68% |
ICC Men's T20 World Cup Country Performances
When looking at the performances of the countries in the tournament, only focusing on those who have played at least ten matches then it is India who has the best strike rate winning 69.60% of the matches with thirty-five victories from their fifty-two games, there are four other countries which also find themselves in the sixty percentage range, South Africa with 66.66%, Australia with 63.82%, Pakistan with 60.78% and finally Sri Lanka with 60.18%.
Of course, winning when it matters is also important. England, for example, only has a 56% success rate; however, they are the joint most successful country in the tournament, being two-time winners.
| Team | Played | Won | Lost | Tie | NR | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | 52 | 35 | 15 | 1(1) | 1 | 69.60% |
| South Africa | 49 | 32 | 16 | 0 | 1 | 66.66% |
| Australia | 47 | 30 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 63.82% |
| Pakistan | 51 | 30 | 19 | 2(0) | 0 | 60.78% |
| Sri Lanka | 54 | 32 | 21 | 1(1) | 0 | 60.18% |
| New Zealand | 46 | 25 | 19 | 2(0) | 0 | 56.52% |
| England | 52 | 28 | 22 | 0 | 2 | 56.00% |
| West Indies | 46 | 24 | 20 | 1(1) | 1 | 54.44% |
| Zimbabwe | 20 | 8 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 42.10% |
| Afghanistan | 30 | 12 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 40.00% |
| Netherlands | 27 | 10 | 16 | 0 | 1 | 38.46% |
| Scotland | 22 | 7 | 13 | 0 | 2 | 35.00% |
| Namibia | 15 | 4 | 10 | 1(1) | 0 | 30.00% |
| Ireland | 28 | 7 | 18 | 0 | 3 | 28.00% |
| Oman | 10 | 2 | 6 | 1(0) | 1 | 27.77% |
| Bangladesh | 45 | 12 | 32 | 0 | 1 | 27.27% |
ICC Men's T20 World Cup Records
Highest Win Margin
Sri Lanka beat Kenya by 172 runs after setting them a target of 261 and then bowling them out for a total of 88 during the 2007 tournament.
Highest Innings Total
The 260/6 set by Sri Lanka in the previously mentioned record is also the highest-scoring innings, some thirty runs more than the next best, which England (230/8) set in 2016.
Highest Match Aggregate
At the Wankhede Stadium in 2016, the match between England and South Africa set the highest aggregate score, with England with 230 and South Africa with 229 for a total of 459 runs!
Lowest Innings Total
The lowest-scoring innings, which was set in 2014 when Sri Lanka bowled out the Netherlands for just 39, was matched in 2024 when the West Indies bowled out Uganda for the same score, with Akeal Hosein taking 5 wickets.
Lowest Match Aggregate
Given that the Netherlands batted first in the above record when only scoring 39, it's no surprise that the match is also the lowest-scoring aggregate, with Sri Lanka hitting the needed 40 runs for a match total of 79 runs.
The game was one of four which have produced under 100 runs; two of those came at the most recent tournament, with the 81 in the New Zealand / Uganda match being the closest to breaking the current record.
Contributor Information
We take great pride in the information provided in our cricket betting previews, and the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Betting Guide is no exception. James and Andy work seamlessly together to collate and present the data in this superb guide to this event
Cricket Tips and Event Manager
Content editor
Records were sourced from ESPN cricinfo and past winners and team information from Wikipedia.
