A new test for African cricket

The 2027 men’s ODI World Cup will provide a revealing measure of how far cricket has travelled since the last edition staged in Africa in 2003. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia will jointly host the tournament in October and November 2027, bringing the global game back to a continent where the sport has been transformed by the rise of T20 cricket.

Since Australia defeated India in the 2003 World Cup final, cricket has undergone a dramatic acceleration. The first major domestic T20 competition followed soon after, T20 internationals arrived in 2004 and 2005, and the Indian Premier League began in 2008. The format has since expanded further, with T10 and The Hundred adding to the sport’s increasingly compressed landscape.

“A wider audience”

Kagiso Rabada, who was eight years old during the 2003 tournament, has developed into one of the world’s leading fast bowlers during that period of rapid change. He said the most visible difference was cricket’s broader reach.

“There’s a wider audience; that’s the most obvious factor,” Rabada told reporters. “And a bigger variety of players. People of different ethnicities are playing and supporting the game. There’s more money in the game and more teams.”

The growth of short-form cricket has not eliminated the importance of one-day internationals, but it has altered the way the format is played. Scoring has accelerated, with the current rate of ODI centuries pointing to a higher total than in 2003, even though only a minority of hundreds have been made at a strike rate above Ricky Ponting’s 115.70 in the 2003 final.

Amla backs South Africa’s home hopes

Hashim Amla, part of a generation that played much of its career before T20 had fully reshaped the sport, described the evolution in simple terms: “It’s been speeded up.” The former South Africa batter also hopes conditions at the 2027 tournament will give bowlers more assistance and produce closer matches.

South Africa will enter the event with a long history of World Cup disappointment. The team has never won the men’s ODI World Cup, while its closest run at the T20 World Cup ended in a seven-run defeat by India in the 2024 final. Amla nevertheless believes the country’s recent progress across formats could make a home tournament a turning point.

“Hopefully having the World Cup at home is their moment,” Amla said. “It could be our prime time to win it. Imagine, after all the disappointments of previous World Cups, winning it at home. That would be a massive boost for cricket and for the country in general.”

More than a cricket tournament

Rabada said the event should also encourage visitors to experience more of the host region than its best-known tourist centres. “There’s much more to South Africa than just going to Cape Town,” he said, while expressing hope that supporters would enjoy the tournament and the wider trip.

The 2027 World Cup will carry significance beyond the boundary. Namibia made its World Cup debut against Zimbabwe in 2003, while that tournament also became a powerful political moment when Andy Flower and Henry Olonga wore black armbands in protest at the state of democracy in Zimbabwe. More than two decades later, the tournament will return to a region marked by distinct political histories, economic inequalities and varying cricket infrastructures.

That combination makes 2027 a particularly important examination of cricket’s expansion. It will show whether the T20 revolution, together with newer formats such as T10 and The Hundred, has genuinely widened the game’s foundations in Africa—or mainly accelerated its most commercial centres.