How good are these forecasts?

Every nation is rated on all its women's one-day internationals, Elo-style, with the margin of victory (a win by wickets counts about 12 runs a wicket).

A season here is a World Cup cycle: every international from the day after one final to the next. Bilateral series are forecast and rated but aren't in the event's table.

The 2029 Women's Cricket World Cup is simulated in full in every run: the groups play each other once and the top sides go through to the semi-finals, then the final.

The field isn't settled yet, so this is a provisional one: the hosts and the nations that would qualify on today's ratings, seeded into groups by rating. It changes as results come in and will be replaced by the real draw once it's announced.

The 2029 World Cup grows to ten teams. The ICC hasn't named the hosts, dates or qualifiers yet, so it is played here as a single round robin, the top four into the semi-finals, like the 2025 edition: the 2025 World Cup's eight nations and the two best-rated of the rest.

Every international is treated as neutral: home advantage isn't modelled, because the archive doesn't say who was at home. That flatters touring sides a little.

Squad selection (rested stars, part-time associate sides) is not in the model.

The champion record replays past World Cups from the archive, so a match abandoned without a result (or one the archive is missing) isn't in the replay, and sides level on points are split by run margins rather than net run rate: a replayed group can finish in a different order from the real one. An edition whose knockouts the archive can't piece together is left out.