WhatsApp message on ‘Fixed’ World Cup matches goes Viral

There is a viral message that is doing the rounds on Whatsapp regarding the ongoing Cricket World Cup, and our readers wanted us to verify if the predictions mentioned in it are practically possible. We heeded their request and decided to look into it.

The message is a list of predictions of all the World Cup matches till the final; if you go by the ‘fixed’ results, Australia, South Africa, India and Sri Lanka are the four teams that will make the semi-finals and South Africa will be crowned as the World Champions on March 29.

What raised a lot of eyebrows is the fact that the message has predicted a couple of major upsets: India losing to Zimbabwe and Pakistan losing to United Arab Emirates. While India and Pakistan have been well below par of late, it is highly unlikely that they will lose to those oppositions.

But when we looked deeper into it, we found that the knockout stage predictions are totally flawed. Here are all the predictions mentioned in the message:

Match-by-match predictions of the World Cup as per the viral Whatsapp text

According to the predicted results, at the end of the group stages, this is how both the pools will stand:

Now as per the World Cup format, the following is how the fixtures will be decided:

Quarter-final 1 A1 v B4
Quarter-final 2 A2 v B3
Quarter-final 3 A3 v B2
Quarter-final 4 A4 v B1

If you go by the rules, none of the teams except Australia will face the opponents as given in the Whatsapp message. As per the actual standing, New Zealand will face Pakistan and not India; South Africa will face Sri Lanka and not Pakistan; India will face England and not New Zealand.

So there you have it: the viral Whatsapp message that has ‘predicted’ all the ‘fixed’ results of this World Cup is actually not practically possible!

But as we neared the end of this exercise, we wondered what it would look like if we changed a few unlikely results given in the previous list and then tried to arrive at the possible World Cup winner. This is what we ended up with:

Sportskeeda’s match-by-match predictions

After the modifications (marked in bold), the tables look as shown below. Since the winner of QF1 will face the winner of QF3, Australia will face England and New Zealand will face South Africa in the two semifinals respectively.