A tournament two years late
Australia was meant to stage this in 2020. The pandemic pushed the event to the United Arab Emirates and Oman under India's name in 2021, so when sixteen teams gathered in Geelong and Hobart in October 2022 they were settling an argument that had been running for two years. The structure was the old one: a first round of two groups, a Super 12 stage, then knockouts. It proved to be the last edition run that way. From 2024 the field grew to twenty and the qualifying round vanished.
Rain and very small margins
Melbourne spring intervened, hard. Three Super 12 fixtures were abandoned without a result, Australia against England among them, and the defending champions went out on net run rate without ever being properly beaten by the teams that eliminated them. The damage elsewhere was done by sides nobody had pencilled in. Ireland beat England by five runs on DLS at the MCG. Zimbabwe took Pakistan down by a single run in Perth, Sikandar Raza claiming three for 25. Then, on the final morning of the group stage in Adelaide, the Netherlands beat South Africa by thirteen runs, Colin Ackermann unbeaten on 41. One afternoon removed a South African side who needed only to turn up, and let a Pakistan team that had lost its opening two matches walk into the semi-finals.
The match everyone remembers
23 October, Melbourne Cricket Ground. Pakistan made 159 for eight. India were 31 for four and going nowhere. Virat Kohli, whose form had been publicly dissected for three years, finished 82 not out from 53 balls and India won by four wickets off the final delivery. He ended the tournament as its leading run-scorer with 296. Whatever else 2022 produced, that innings is what people mean when they mention it.
England's double
Pakistan beat New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the first semi-final, Mohammad Rizwan making 57. England then dismantled India in Adelaide, chasing 169 without losing a wicket in sixteen overs, Alex Hales 86 not out and Jos Buttler 80 not out. The final on 13 November was a slower, meaner contest. Sam Curran took the top off Pakistan's innings and returned three for 12; Ben Stokes made 52 not out and saw England home with an over to spare. Five wickets, a second title after 2010, and a distinction that had never been held before: England were simultaneously the fifty-over and twenty-over world champions. Curran was named player of the match and player of the tournament.
The consequences ran on for years. Pakistan's near-miss hardened into a long argument about their batting approach. Australia's failure to defend the trophy at home ended the Aaron Finch era in the format. And the associate results in Hobart and Adelaide gave the ICC the evidence it wanted for expansion, which arrived eighteen months later in the Caribbean and the United States.