Predicting opening combinations of all teams for T20 World Cup 2020

The next edition of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will take place later this year in Australia. The top-8 teams in India, Pakistan, New Zealand, South Africa, defending champions West Indies, past editions runners-up England,  Afghanistan and hosts Australia will be joined by four qualifiers from the first stage post which they will be divided into two groups of six each.

With the World Cup less than eight months away, teams are in overdrive as far as zeroing on their ideal-combination is concerned. One of the most critical positions in cricket and especially T20 cricket is of the openers. That is because they are the ones who get to face the maximum number of balls, and if you look at the batting records in T20I, most of them would be held by the opening batsman.

The upcoming World Cup is set to feature a plethora of world-class openers and we thought, why not make a list of probable opening pairs for each of the top-8 teams.

Here’s the list:

1. Australia- David Warner and Aaron Finch

The upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia will probably be the first time after the inaugural event in South Africa [in 2007] that the Men in green and gold will head in as the prime title contenders.

To be confident, Australia had never taken the T20 World Cup in the past but with the upcoming event set to take place on home soil, winning the elusive trophy remains high on the agenda for Justin Langer and Aaron Finch-led Aussies.

And, the key to them winning the tournament will be the opening duo of Aaron Finch and David Warner. The duo, who are at the 7th spot-846 runs in 23 matches at an average of 40.28- in the all-time list of most runs by an opening pair, have been at the heart of Australia’s renaissance in the shortest format of the game.

Since the start of 2019, the opening pair of Finch and Warner have accumulated 544 runs in just nine innings at an average of 77.71- the best of the all the opening pairs in the world- including one 50 and three 100+ stands- the last of which came in the series decider against South Africa to set-up a 97-run win for the Aussies. Australia did the mistake of batting Warner at No.4 in the last T20 WC; bet, they wouldn’t make the same gaffe again.