Current FIH Indoor World Ranking: 3

Indoor World Cup history: 2011 – 9th, 2015 – 4th, 2018 – 3rd.

With a swashbuckling playing style and blessed with some truly outstanding individuals, Iran will rightly be considered as one of the competition favourites in Pretoria. Since recording a ninth-place finish on their event debut at Poznan 2011, Iran have improved at every subsequent tournament, finishing fourth at Leipzig 2015 before claiming a sensational bronze medal at Berlin 2018 with a crushing 5-0 victory over Australia. Iran have won the Men’s Indoor Hockey Asia Cup a record eight times, but are not the current title holders, having finally lost their crown in 2022 when Malaysia claimed a shoot-out victory after the final finished with the scores locked at 4-4. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Iran, who had dominated the competition with six wins out of six prior to the gold medal match, inspired by the form of Amirmahdi Mirzakhani, who finished competition top scorer with 13 goals in seven matches. Will 2023 be their year?