Feel The Thrill: Highs and Lows of the Official Song of the 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup

4 minute read
We’ve loved official World Cup theme songs since Who Rules The World in 1992. Rock hasn’t gotten much softer, and theme songs haven’t gotten much more boring. We suspect it will never be defeated. If you are wondering how the 2026 T20 World Cup is going Feel the thrill of Anirudh Ravichander if it’s true, it’s better than you might think – at least if you measure it with the right metrics.

Let’s frame this.

In 1971, England recorded The Ashes Song to celebrate their victory Down Under.

Admire the ‘this’ll do’ text.

When we arrived people said
The Aussies would leave us for dead
But we knew we would prove them wrong
And that’s why we’re singing this song
Oh! The feeling is great
For losing is something we hate

The Ashes Song very much set the lyrical bar for all subsequent cricket songs and thankfully it’s a bar that no one has wanted to raise much higher in the many years since.

This is the kind of thing we’re looking for here, from our latest entry in this rich and prestigious line. Over to you, Feel The Thrill. (At least the English bits. We’re unfortunately not qualified to comment on the Hindi ones.)

“This is our year”

That’s the first line of the song. It’s almost certainly a wonderfully banal opening, but you could, if you were feeling particularly generous, consider it instead as a covert dig at the incredible frequency of ICC world events.

If it wasn’t your year for the 2021 (T20), 2022 (T20), 2023 (50-over) or 2024 (T20) World Cups, and the 2025 Champions Trophy didn’t bring you joy either… maybe 2026 is your year!

If that doesn’t work, there’s always 2027 (50-over).

The laziest rhyme this side of Lenny Kravitz’s Fly Away

Lenny isn’t alone, but he deserves a lot of points for getting pop music’s cheesiest rhymes right at the beginning of Fly Away (which is also a terrible song title).

“I wish I could fly that high in the sky,” Len sings without meaning. After a brief pause to absorb the majesty of those words, he follows them with a terrible lyric that is all his own: “Just like a dragonfly.”

Anirudh has also opted for a heavenly/high rhyme. We’re pretty sure his attempt reads: “Dreams on the back with the best high. One more ball and we’ll touch the sky.”

You’ll notice the reference to a ball there. That’s right! We found gold!

Are…

Texts that explicitly (and clumsily) refer to specific aspects of cricket

Official World Cup songs want to be cool, but official World Cup songs also often want to refer to cricket. These dual desires simply cannot be met.

Normally the former wins and all cricketing details are left out in favor of abstract vibration-based triumphalism. Say a lot of things about believing in yourself and triumphing against all odds, and people can take that as Holland beating England in that incredible 2009 final if they want.

It’s an easy outing. You can plausibly claim that you’ve fulfilled your cricket song mission, but you haven’t undermined your song by saying ‘googly’ or ‘Mitch Marsh’.

However, on this occasion, Anirudh has gone the other way admirably. He mentions bats and pads and all kinds. Crucially, he does all this without making any lyrical effort.

This is probably our favorite bit.

Eyes on the World Cup
Hands in the air
Born for this moment 
T20 vibes everywhere

It doesn’t quite match the bit in Who Rules The World where the guy literally just lists all the countries that played in the 1992 World Cup, but it’s undeniably cut from similar cloth – specifically the ‘let’s just say a few cricket things’ cloth.

Chris Woakes gets a look

One of the great things about using footage from previous World Cups in your cool video is that it’s just a little bit harder to keep everything on brand. There’s always one or two intruders.

It’s just the briefest moment, but it’s nice to see Chris Woakes appear there among all the sunglasses and fireworks. It’s slightly off-putting that he looks like he’s about to punch a small child, but luckily it’s Chris Woakes, so you know that fear is unfounded. (Imagine if he did! Shocked the whole world.)

I’ll dial it in

Footage of songs (supposedly) being recorded is a staple of music videos, as it’s exciting to see the genesis of an artistic work.

This is somewhat undermined when the footage in question shows the singer reading the text from his phone for the recording.

Nothing says “I knocked this out in five minutes while I was taking a dump this morning” better than lyrics that are so boring you haven’t even bothered to memorize them.

In summary

Feel The Thrill by Anirudh Ravichander is a classic from the oeuvre. 9/10

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