ICC World Cup 2019: Expected Weather Forecast during the tournament

“English conditions” has been the most used term with England hosting the World Cup 2019 as the people expect pacers to swing the ball under the overcast conditions that too in the Summer. The thought might be true to an extent but a lot of things changed over the last decade with respect to the limited-overs formats and also the conditions in England compared to the general perspective.

The longevity of swing produced by two new white Kookaburra balls is five overs at best and the England weather is getting drier when compared to the past. The two factors have contributed towards England’s cause of becoming a revolutionary batting unit in the ODI format. If one expects the World Cup to play out like some of the low-scoring games that the warm-up matches were, they will be in for a surprise.

The 2018 UK Summer was the hottest ever as the mean temperature between June and August read – 15.8 °C; the highest during a UK Summer. (Data available since 1910) The month of May usually remains colder with rains here and there as 2017 and 2018 had a mean temperature of 12.1° C and 2019 was no different with an average temperate close to 12° Celsius recorded so far.

Another reason for the low scoring warm-ups was that the matches being played on used pitches. Afghanistan defeated Pakistan in Bristol on a track that was used for the ODI between England and Pakistan while Southampton employed a pitch three times in the space of two weeks. The Kia Oval laid a green strip for India and New Zealand game where the ball produced swing and seam for about 20 overs under sunny conditions.

It showed how weather will be irrelevant during the Mega event unless there will be some grass on the top. Considering the weather forecasts of all matches, it appears that a total of ten out of 48 matches in the tournament could witness rain. However, it is unsure how much they will end up affecting the result of the game at this point in time.

Taking the One-Day matches held in June and July into consideration at the venues hosting World Cup 2019, we can expect the average score to be over 265 for this tournament. At the same time, the record of chasing teams could improve by a considerable margin compared to the previous editions of the CWC. The Old Trafford is expected to be the lowest scoring venue as it hasn’t witnessed big totals in the past two years.