2023 will be another huge year for sport and for our national teams, so I thought I'd do a little preview.
From 13th January, England Men's Field Hockey side kick things off with the Hockey World Cup. We should make the knockout stages but usually come unstuck vs the likes of Belgium, Netherlands, Germany or Australia. The tournament will be held in India for the second time in a row.
The Women's T20 World Cup starts 9th Feb and will for some reason run alongside the Men's ODI cricket World Cup, of which we are defending champions. Australia and India will be favourites in both tournaments, but we will have strong claims.
The 8th March sees the start of the World Baseball Classic - the sport's defacto World cup. Against the odds, the United Kingdom have some how qualified for the main tournament, news that has gone under the radar here. We will be in a group with the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Canada - 4 bona fida baseball nations. Europe's traditional heavyweights Netherlands and Italy are also there, alongside Czecia.
July 10th is the start of the Women's Football World Cup, of which we will be one of the favourites having won both the Euro's and having beaten the USA (albeit both on home soil). It's down under so most games will be in the very early hours of the morning with only 1 game a day being at a reasonable time for UK viewers. Ireland have also qualified.
July 28th is the Netball World Cup, England won't get past the Aussies or the Kiwis but can beat the rest, including the hosts South Africa. Malawi, Jamaica, Trinidad and Uganda are the other "big" Netball nations.
August 19th will be the Start of the World Athletics Championships, the biggest meet outside the Olympics and often the best 100m men's race going. Earlier in the year you also have the European games in June - a fairly new tournament similar to the commonwealth games.
September 8th is probably my biggest of the year - the Men's Rugby World Cup. 4 sides go in as favourites, France, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa. England have some work to do this year to catch up with the big 4.
It should be an interesting tournament with some less common names qualifying this time around such as Chile, Spain and Portgual.
September rounds the big events off, with the Solheim and Ryder cups taking place back to back. Europe will be without a score of their old stalwarts following the LIV taking players out of contention, but i'm still hopeful we can bring both trophies home for Europe.
For those looking for sports that don't have any home involvement, you still have:
Handball (Men's) World Cup in Jan and Women's in November
Ice Hockey World Cup in May
AFC Asian Cup in June (their Euro's), controversially awarded to Qatar over South Korea.
World Aquatics Championships and Water Polo worlds in July
Men's Basketball World cup in August (one of the World's flagship sporting events with huge interest outside the UK)
World Rowing champs in September
Rugby league 9's supposedly happening in October
Yet another full on year