The first World Cup (or at least the first World Cup as we’d recognise it today) took place not in 1975, but in 1973, culminating in a final at Edgbaston where England beat Australia by 92 runs. It took men’s cricket another two years to catch up to their female counterparts, but they got there in the end.
It is difficult to know exactly what influence this inaugural women’s tournament may have had on the International Cricket Conference, as it was then, but it is a fact that two days before the women staged their final, the ICC approved the concept of a 60-overs-a-side competition involving all the current Test-playing nations to be played in England in 1975.
And so it was that between June 7 and June 21 England, Australia, the West Indies, India, Pakistan and New Zealand were joined by Sri Lanka and East Africa for the World Cup. Except not everyone wanted to call it the World Cup. The 1976 Wisden, for example, refers to it as the Prudential Cup.
Even so, the public saw it as a World Cup and by the time the West Indies had beaten Australia by 17 runs in the final, it was widely regarded as a resounding success. The tournament threw up its oddities: Sunil Gavaskar, for example, carried his bat through 60 overs for an unbeaten 36 as India declined to chase England’s 334 for four in the opening game.
When Australia played Sri Lanka at the Oval, the islanders caught Jeff Thomson at the height of his considerable powers. Thomson had been troubled by no balls and his mood was not improved when he started his second spell with a wide. He finished with one for 22, but, more saliently, he sent two Sri Lankan batsmen to hospital – Duleep Mendis, who was struck on the head, and Sunil Wettimuny, who hobbled off with a bruised foot.
Afterwards, the Sri Lankan manager offered the view that he did not believe bouncers should be bowled at non-recognised batsmen. As Sri Lanka were not a Test-playing nation, he argued that all the Sri Lankan batsmen should fall into this category.
The 1975 tournament consisted of 15 matches played over five playing days, a format that was echoed four years later, again in England, when Canada replaced East Africa as one of the two non-Test playing teams.
Although peace had broken out in Kerry Packer’s war with the cricket establishment, Australia had still to brush off the dust from the conflict and they sent a team that omitted the Chappell brothers along with Dennis Lillee, Thomson and Rod Marsh.
This time England reached the final to face the might of the West Indies and again the West Indies swept to an imperious victory. Clive Lloyd had scored a century in the 1975 final, this time it was the turn of Viv Richards who carved out a wonderful, unbeaten 138, but it was Collis King’s 67-ball 86 that took the game away from England who eventually fell 92 runs short.
Clearly, the World Cup had taken hold and for the 1983 tournament it was decided there should be a double round of pool matches to reduce the chances of a ‘freak result caused by the weatherâ€.
Sri Lanka had by now been elevated to Test status and newly independent Zimbabwe earned a place among the eight teams by virtue of having beaten Bermuda in the 1982 ICC Trophy.
Many of the Zimbabweans had had experience in South Africa’s Currie Cup and not only did they produce one of cricket’s great upsets when they beat Australia by 13 runs at Trent Bridge, they also played a significant role in one of the World Cup’s greatest moments.
In their second outing against India at Tunbridge Wells, Peter Rawson and Kevin Curren scythed through the Indian batting, reducing them to nine for four, 78 for seven and then 140 for eight. Kapil Dev, however, was at the crease, apparently changing gears from a trance into a daze as he hammered 16 fours and six sixes in a magnificent 175 not out. His unbroken ninth wicket partnership with Syed Kirmani yielded 126 and remains a World Cup record.
India duly won by 31 runs, moved into the semifinals where they outplayed England to win by six wickets and then, astonishingly, defended a moderate 183 to beat the West Indies by 43 runs.
The victory signalled India’s emergence as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage and, although it was not apparent at the time, marked the beginning of the decline of the West Indies, first as a one-day side and later as a Test match team. After playing in the first three World Cup finals, the West Indies have not since reached a final.
India’s triumph also provided the impetus to move the World Cup away from England for the first time to the subcontinent where India and Pakistan co-hosted the 1987 event. There was no little trepidation, particularly from the Western nations, at the prospect. The transport infrastructure on the subcontinent was, at best, patchy; the hotels varied widely in quality; the crowds were volatile and the pitches crumbled.
At that stage, matches were still played over 60 overs a side, but the shortened daylight hours on the subcontinent prompted a readjustment.
One early proposal, which was at first accepted, was to carry each match over to a second day, but as this tended to negate the whole point of one-day cricket, it was eventually discarded. Innings were reduced to 50 overs to set an international standard that remains to this day.
By the time Australia and England played the final at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens, the consensus was that the tournament had been a success. Both co-hosts fell at the semifinal stage and England might have gained their first victory in a final, but fell seven runs short.
The scapegoat was the captain, Mike Gatting, who got himself out for 41 reverse-sweeping the first ball bowled by Allan Border, but the fact that Eden Gardens was packed to the rafters was evidence enough that the competition could command an international audience.
The 1983 and 1987 tournaments had been played against the backdrop of South Africa’s rebel tours. England, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Australia had all had players lured away by the rand, but the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 broke the logjam of South African politics.
At Mandela’s personal urging South Africa were accepted as late entrants for the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, increasing the number of competing teams from eight to nine for the first tournament to played in coloured clothing, with white balls and under floodlights.
Australia, the reigning champions, were red-hot favourites, but they lost their opening game to co-hosts New Zealand in Auckland, were thrashed by nine wickets by South Africa in their second match and spent the rest of the tournament vainly trying to catch up.
Pakistan, meanwhile, looked anything like prospective world champions. In their opening game they were unable to defend 220 for two, losing by 10 wickets to the West Indies and, after beating Zimbabwe, were bowled for just 74 by England in Adelaide. England’s reply was caught short by a downpour and Pakistan were able to burgle a point from the match, a point that was later to deny Australia the fourth semifinal spot.
New Zealand, meanwhile, had planned carefully and finished the round robin section top of the log with just one defeat in their eight games. They had lost, however, to Pakistan who were to repeat the result in the Auckland semifinal, thanks to a blistering unbeaten 60 off 37 balls from Inzamam-ul-Haq.
In the second semifinal in Sydney, South Africa, bizarrely, found themselves needing 22 off one ball to beat England as a result of a rain interruption. It was a task beyond even the mighty powers of Brian McMillan and England went through to meet Pakistan in Melbourne.
On the night, Pakistan were worthy winners, in turn coaxed and bullied by their inspirational captain Imran Khan and it set the stage nicely for the World Cup to return to the subcontinent in 1996.
This time around Sri Lanka joined as co-hosts, a development not entirely welcomed by all the competing nations. Australia and the West Indies forfeited their matches in Colombo for security reasons, but such was the format of the tournament that both could afford to do so and still advance to the quarter-finals.
There the West Indies, shock losers a couple of weeks earlier to Kenya, ousted the tournament’s form team before Shane Warne bowled Australia to victory in the second semifinal.
The first semifinal in Calcutta had been abandoned with the match being awarded to Sri Lanka after Indian supporters had rioted in an attempt to prevent their team’s inevitable slide to defeat.
Sri Lanka would have won anyway (India were 120 for eight in reply to 251 for eight when the match was called off) but the night remains one of Indian cricket’s most shameful moments.
Sri Lanka had been the surprise packages in a tournament that featured pinch-hitters at almost every stage. The Sri Lankan trump-card, however, was left-handed opener Sanath Jayasuriya who threw his bat at practically anything he could see, but in the final it was the veteran Aravinda de Silva who batted, bowled and caught Sri Lanka to a seven-wicket victory over Australia.
For the 1999 tournament a Super Six round was introduced to avoid the tedium of the first round in 1996 which took 30 matches to eliminate the most recent Test-playing nation, Zimbabwe, and three minnows, Kenya, Holland and the United Arab Emirates.
South Africa were seen as favourites in a tournament that was generally regarded as wide open with Australia, Pakistan and India also having their advocates. As it turned out, neither the hosts, England, nor the champions, Sri Lanka, made it past the first round and while Australia looked to be picking up momentum after a shaky start, South Africa and Pakistan looked to be the form teams, despite Pakistan’s shock defeat against Bangladesh, a result still view with some scepticism in many quarters.
South Africa had two chances to eliminate Australia and failed to take either, losing to a Steve Waugh century at Headingley and then, four days later, to a run-out in the semifinals at Edgbaston in what is probably the greatest one-day game played.
Pakistan destroyed New Zealand by nine wickets in their semifinal, but then capitulated feebly in the final, lasting just 39 overs before being bowled out for 132. Australia needed just one ball more than 20 overs to complete their second World Cup triumph.
As things stand, the West Indies and Australia have both won the World Cup with one triumph each to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. No team has won the tournament on home soil. England have been beaten finalists on three occasions and South Africa’s record consists of losing twice in the semifinals and once in the quarter-finals. Is it time to have a new name entered into the record books?
More cricket in our Cricket World Cup special report