Why Australia and England can’t stop India or anyone else from winning the T20 World Cup 2026

When it comes to the discussion of title favourites for the upcoming T20 World Cup, Team India appear the strongest contenders given their dominant record since their triumph in 20,24 in addition to the home advantage factor. The Men in Blue, after all, have won 33 out of 41 games under Suryakumar Yadav’s leadership during this period, including a couple of Super Over wins, and had won the Asia Cup in September without losing a single match.

India’s dominance of the format , however, does not mean there aren’t other teams in the picture as far as title contenders are concerned. South Africa had reached the final of an ICC World Cup – either ODI or T20I – for the first time in 2024 and will be hoping to conquer the final hurdle this time around.

Pakistan have greatly improved in the 20-over format since Mike Hesson’s arrival as their white-ball coach last year, and their 3-0 whitewash of Australia at home does indicate that they are not a side to be taken lightly. And let’s not forget New Zealand, the perennial dark horses in ICC events who end up reaching the semi-finals more often than not and have featured in the final five times over the last 10 years.

What, then, of Australia and England, two teams that enjoy the best win percentage in T20Is after India since July 2024? The Aussies are by far the most successful cricketing nation, having won the ODI World Cup a record six times in the men’s game in addition to the T20 World Cup and the World Test Championship in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

England, on the other hand, might not have experienced as much success in global events as their arch-rivals but enjoy bragging rights in the T20 World Cup, which they have won twice (2010 and 2022) till date, besides finishing runners-up in 2016.

Does that, however, automatically make these two teams title favourites for the upcoming tournament? Can they stop defending champions India? While England and Australia will have featured in multiple top-four predictions made by experts in the build-up to the tournament, and both squads are full of Indian Premier League stars, there are reasons to believe that these two teams aren’t necessarily in the title picture time around.

England yet to gain a firm footing under Brook

England, after all, are yet to find a firm footing under Harry Brook’s leadership in the white-ball formats, with the star batter having succeeded Jos Buttler in the role less than a year ago.

Buttler had masterminded England’s triumphant T20 World Cup campaign in Australia along with then-white-ball coach Matthew Mott. The team’s white-ball performance graph, however, witnessed a significant slide, especially in ICC events – failing to reach the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy and bowing out of the 2024 T20 World Cup in the semi-finals.

Their performances haven’t exactly picked up since Brook took over as captain in April last year. England suffered ODI series defeats against South Africa and New Zealand during this period, the former on home soil with the Proteas also holding England to a 1-1 in a three-match T20I series in the same tour.

They did dominate West Indies at home last summer, and had won five out of six matches in their tour of Sri Lanka ahead of the T20 World Cup. West Indies and Sri Lanka, however, don’t figure among the top T20I teams in the world at the moment even if they are past T20 world champions, and beating them doesn’t exactly establish England as the title contenders.

The upcoming tournament will mark Brook’s captaincy debut in a major tournament and will be a litmus test of his leadership skills. There are examples of individuals leading their team to World Cup glory despite being new to captaincy, the most prominent of which is MS Dhoni leading India to victory in the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007.

It will also be a test of his ability to help his team put their recent controversies behind and focus on the task ahead.

Brook, after all, had recently made headlines for getting involved in a heated altercation with a nightclub bouncer in New Zealand that was followed by a disastrous Ashes tour, where reports of binge drinking and lack of discipline combined with getting outplayed by the Aussies yet again led to furore back home.

Focusing on the task at hand, thus, can become all the more challenging after such a turbulent period.

Aussies missing key stars in T20 World Cup

What England will not have to worry about in the upcoming tournament is the availability of key players, including the injury-prone express pacer Jofra Archer. The same cannot be said of the Australian team, who will be without major names, including Pat Cummins, the Test and ODI captain who also happens to be one of the top performers in the T20 circuit.

While the Aussies won the 2023 ICC World Cup in India and had reached the semi-finals of the Champions Trophy last year, their decline in the T20 World Cup has been even more pronounced compared to the Englishmen. How else can one describe a team crashing out of the tournament in the group stage at home a year after finally winning their maiden title, that too in the UAE? Two years later, they had failed to reach the semi-finals once again, this time suffering a knockout punch at the hands of the Indian team in the Super 8s.

Talking about their recent performances, Australia did win 12 out of 14 T20Is from November 2024 to October last year, which included nine victories on the trot. The 1-2 defeat against India at home and the 0-3 whitewash in Pakistan, however, raise concern over their ability to challenge for the title over the course of the next one month.

Further adding to that concern is the absence of key match-winners in Mitchell Starc and Cummins. Starc, who was the stand-out performer in Australia’s 4-1 triumph in the recent Ashes, has retired from T20Is while Cummins has been ruled out of the tournament due to a back injury that has allowed him to make just one appearance across formats since July.

It’s not just the pace department that has glaring omissions, though. Steve Smith, who had retired from ODIs last year and has not represented his country in the 20-over format for the last two years, has been left out of the T20 World Cup squad despite his stellar performance in the Big Bash League, where he struck 299 runs in six outings at an average and strike rate of 59.80 and 167.97, respectively.

The recent defeats or the absence of key players do not necessarily rule out an Australian victory in the upcoming T20 World Cup.

The Aussies, after all, have a history of losing bilateral assignments right before winning an ICC event, and have won tournaments without star performers in the past – a classic example of which would be winning the 2003 World Cup without Shane Warne.

What the aforementioned points do highlight, though, is just how tough it will be for England or Australia to take the T20 World Cup off India’s hands in the upcoming tournament.