đ The Week in International Sport
Monday March 9th: the Men's T20 World Cup, soccer geography and Lucy Hamilton
This year at Plot the Ball, Iâm using data to try and better understand the landscape of international team sport. For some background to this project â which Iâm calling âRank the Nationsâ â you can read my introductory post here.
In todayâs edition of The Week in International Sport:
đŽđł India winning a world title in menâs T20I cricket
đ˛đ˝ Mexico winning a Pan American title in menâs softball
đ Chart of the week: assessing the sources of womenâs soccerâs top players
âŞď¸ Highlight of the week: Lucy Hamiltonâs first wicket for Australia
đ A few other interesting things I learned
As a reminder: the team ratings used in this newsletter are on a zero-to-10 scale, and are calculated based on a nationâs performance in competitive fixtures in a given sport since the start of the 2022 calendar year. (For more detail, click here.)
đŽđł India win the 2026 Menâs T20 World Cup
One of my strongest sporting opinions is that many other codes would benefit from adopting the North American tradition of deciding the winners of major competitions by contesting multi-game playoff series.
If I was in charge of T20I cricket, such a format change might be the first thing I would implement. Twenty20 can be a volatile game, and a single-elimination final therefore isnât a great way to pick the winner of an important tournament like the recently concluded Menâs T20 World Cup. This year, that didnât matter all that much: India (7.1) have outplayed every other team in the sport over the last five years, and thoroughly outplayed New Zealand (5.6) in yesterdayâs final.
For consistency with other sports, bilateral series â which India have dominated â are excluded from this ranking system. Their excellence still shines through, though: in retaining the trophy this year, they became the first team to win two consecutive World Cup titles. (They were knocked out in the semi-finals in 2022.) What sets them apart from the rest is their aggressive approach to batting: over the last few weeks, they have scored three of the five highest team run totals in T20 World Cup history.
đ˛đ˝ Mexico win the 2026 Menâs Softball Pan American Championship
A slightly late update on some menâs softball from last month: the Pan American Championship concluded at the end of February. Argentina (7.8) are comfortably the highest-rated team in the sport â but they didnât manage to win the competition.
The South American nation were hoping for a third consecutive title, but they were upset 0-1 by Mexico (5.2) in the final. Canada (6.7) and the USA (6.7) were the two strongest other nations competing, but respectively finished fourth and fifth overall.
đ Chart of the week: Where are womenâs soccerâs top players from?
For âRank the Nationsâ, Iâll also be tracking the âplayer of the yearâ and âteam of the yearâ awards handed out by global governing bodies. As the Asian Cup kicked off, this week I was interested in looking at where top players in womenâs soccer come from.
At first glance, there is more diversity in the womenâs game: since 2020, players from nations outside Europe make up 26% of FIFA World 11 selections. (In menâs soccer, itâs 20%.) The real story, though, is within Europe. In the menâs game, many countries outside the âbig fiveâ â England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain â churn out lots of top talent. In the womenâs game, though, their pipelines are not currently producing at the same rate: those smaller nations account for just 8% of World 11 selections.
âŞď¸ Highlight of the week: Lucy Hamiltonâs first wicket for Australia
Unless and until some sort of structure of regular competition is set up by the ICC for womenâs test cricket, I wonât be able to put together any team ratings for this format. Currently, fixtures are just too infrequent â even over a five-year time period.
The rare tests which do take place still make for great viewing, though. During last weekâs match between India and Australia, I enjoyed watching young left-arm fast bowler Lucy Hamilton excel in only her second international appearance. Her first wicket for Australia was quite the scalp: in the sixth over of the first innings, she pitched the ball up to Smriti Mandhana and nipped it between the openerâs bat and her front pad. Middle stump was pegged back, and the 19-year-old let out a roar.
You can watch a replay of this dismissal on YouTube here.
đ What else I learned last week
For The Guardian, Tanya Aldred reported on T20I cricket in China, where more resources are allocated to the womenâs game than to the menâs. The women are still far from good enough to qualify for the Olympic Games, but â according to a Chinese academic who spoke at a conference in England last month â this atypical disparity reflects the nationâs view of âthe promotion of womenâs sport as an efficient pathway to maximise Chinaâs performance in the global medal raceâ.
For the Irish Times, Nathan Johns investigated how Ireland were able to recruit one of the top rugby union prospects in South Africa away from their rivals. The Irish governing body is always alert for opportunities to widen its player pool, but the family circumstances of back-row forward Josh Neill are unique: his âolder brother, Jordan, made a similar decision a few years earlierâŚfor cricket, rather than rugby, representing Ireland at an Under-19 World Cupâ.
On Substack, Neil Paine showed just how dominant Japan have been over the 20-year history of the World Baseball Classic. Coming into this yearâs tournament, the defending champions had won 79% of their WBC matches and had âroughly double the cumulative run differential of the next-highest nationâ. (At 71%, the Dominican Republic have the next-best win rate.) So far in 2026, they have won all three of their pool-stage games and outscored their opponents 25-9.
The next edition of the newsletter will be published on Monday March 16th.
