2023 Cricket World Cup

Result

Player of the Match (Final)

Travis Head, Australia

Tournament format

10 teams playing a single round-robin league -- every team facing every other team once -- with the top four advancing to the semi-finals and then the final. Hosted solely by India, the first Cricket World Cup ever staged by just one nation.

Full match archive

Every match of the 2023 tournament, not just the final — all 47 group-stage and semi-final matches, plus the final round-robin standings. See all 47 matches →

Final: match context

Australia won a record sixth World Cup title in 2023, pulling off one of the great upsets in the tournament's history by beating an unbeaten, red-hot host nation India by 6 wickets in front of a reported world-record cricket crowd of 92,453 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. India arrived at the final having won all nine of their previous matches in the tournament and were overwhelming favourites in front of an almost entirely partisan home crowd. Winning the toss, India chose to bat but never found real fluency against Australia's seam attack: Rohit Sharma's attacking 47 off just 31 balls gave India a fast start, Virat Kohli made a watchful 54, and KL Rahul added 66, but India were bowled out for 240 in their full 50 overs -- Mitchell Starc took 3 wickets, with Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins claiming two apiece as Australia's bowlers repeatedly found ways to break partnerships before they could fully develop. Australia's chase wobbled early, losing 3 wickets for just 47 runs, putting the near-100,000-strong crowd back into the contest. But Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne rebuilt the innings with a match-defining, unbroken 192-run partnership -- Head's 137 off 120 balls, studded with 15 fours and 4 sixes, was the outstanding individual performance of the match, while Labuschagne finished unbeaten on 58. Glenn Maxwell struck the winning runs as Australia reached 241 for 4 in 43 overs, a 6-wicket win completed with almost seven overs unused -- a margin that reflected just how comprehensively Australia had turned the match around from their early-innings trouble. The result is widely described as one of the biggest upsets in Cricket World Cup history given India's perfect run into the final and the sheer weight of home expectation; the crowd, roaring throughout India's innings and the early stages of Australia's reply, fell almost completely silent as the chase was completed. The win was Australia's sixth World Cup title, a men's record, from their eighth final appearance -- both also records. Australian opener David Warner played the final match of his one-day international career in the final itself. Virat Kohli was named Player of the Tournament, finishing with 765 runs, a new record for the most runs scored in a single World Cup, despite India's ultimate defeat, while Mohammed Shami led all bowlers in the competition with 24 wickets. The tournament drew record attendance figures across its full schedule (over 1.25 million spectators in total) and record streaming numbers, reportedly peaking at 59 million concurrent viewers for the final alone -- underlining the scale of cricket's following on the subcontinent even in a tournament that ultimately ended in home heartbreak.

Sources

• Wikipedia: 2023 Cricket World Cup
• Wikipedia: 2023 Cricket World Cup final
• ESPNcricinfo