Icc world cup History

Before the first Cricket World Cup

The first ever international cricket match was played between Canada and the United States, on the 24 and 25 September 1844. However, the first credited Test match was played in 1877 between Australia and England, and the two teams competed regularly for The Ashes in subsequent years. South Africa was admitted to Test status in 1889. Representative cricket teams were selected to tour each other, resulting in bilateral competition. Cricket was also included as an Olympic sport at the 1900 Paris Games, where Great Britain defeated France to win the gold medal. This was the only appearance of cricket at the Summer Olympics.

The first multilateral competition at international level was the 1912 Triangular Tournament, a Test cricket tournament played in England between all three Test-playing nations at the time: England, Australia and South Africa. The event was not a success: the summer was exceptionally wet, making play difficult on damp uncovered pitches, and attendances were poor, attributed to a "surfeit of cricket". In subsequent years, international Test cricket has generally been organised as bilateral series: a multilateral Test tournament was not organised again until the quadrangular Asian Test Championship in 1999.

The number of nations playing Test cricket increased gradually over the years, with the addition of West Indies in 1928, New Zealand in 1930, India in 1932, and Pakistan in 1952, but international cricket continued to be played as bilateral Test matches over three, four or five days.

In the early 1960s, English county cricket teams began playing a shortened version of cricket which only lasted for one day. Starting in 1962 with a four-team knockout competition known as the Midlands Knock-Out Cup, and continuing with the inaugural Gillette Cup in 1963, one-day cricket grew in popularity in England. A national Sunday League was formed in1969. The first One-Day International event was played on the fifth day of a rain-aborted Test match between England andAustralia at Melbourne in 1971, to fill the time available and as compensation for the frustrated crowd. It was a forty overmatch with eight balls per over.

In the late 1970s, Kerry Packer established the rival World Series Cricket (WSC) competition. It introduced many of the features of One Day International cricket that are now commonplace, including coloured uniforms, matches played at night under floodlights with a white ball and dark sight screens, and, for television broadcasts, multiple camera angles, effects microphones to capture sounds from the players on the pitch, and on-screen graphics. The first of the matches with coloured uniforms was the WSC Australians in wattle gold versus WSC West Indians in coral pink, played at VFL Park in Melbourne on 17 January 1979. The success and popularity of the domestic one-day competitions in England and other parts of the world, as well as the early One-Day Internationals, prompted the ICC to consider organising a Cricket World Cup

Prudential World Cups (1975–1983)[

The Prudential Cup trophy

The inaugural Cricket World Cup was hosted in 1975 by England, the only nation able to put forward the resources to stage an event of such magnitude at that time. The 1975 tournament started on 7 June. The first three events were held in England and officially known as the Prudential Cup after the sponsors Prudential plc. The matches consisted of 60 six-ball overs per team, played during the daytime in traditional form, with the players wearing cricket whites and using red cricket balls.

Eight teams participated in the first tournament: Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the West Indies (the six Test nations at the time), together withSri Lanka and a composite team from East Africa. One notable omission was South Africa, who were banned from international cricket due to apartheid. The tournament was won by the West Indies, who defeated Australia by 17 runs in the final at Lord's. Glenn Turner was the top run getter with 333 runs and Gary Gilmour head the bowling charts with 11 wickets.

The 1979 World Cup saw the introduction of the ICC Trophy competition to select non-Test playing teams for the World Cup, with Sri Lanka and Canada qualifying. The West Indies won a second consecutive World Cup tournament, defeating the hosts, England, by 92 runs in the final At a meeting which followed the World Cup, the International Cricket Conference agreed to make the competition a quadrennial event. Gordon Greenidge was the top run getter with 253 runs and Mike Hendrick was the top wicket taker with 10 wickets.

The 1983 event was hosted by England for a third consecutive time. By this time, Sri Lanka had become a Test-playing nation, and Zimbabwe qualified through the ICC Trophy. A fielding circle was introduced, 30 yards (27 m) away from thestumps. Four fieldsmen needed to be inside it at all times. In this tournament teams faced each other twice, before moving into the knock-outs. India, an outsider quoted at 66–1 to win by bookmakers before the competition began, were crowned champions after upsetting the West Indies by 43 runs in the final. Roger Binny was the top wicket taker with 18 wickets and David Gower with 384 runs was the highest run getter.

1987–1996

India and Pakistan jointly hosted the 1987 tournament, the first time that the competition was held outside England. The games were reduced from 60 to 50 overs per innings, the current standard, because of the shorter daylight hours in theIndian subcontinent compared with England's summer. Australia won the championship by defeating England by 7 runs in the final, the closest margin in World Cup final history.

The 1992 World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, introduced many changes to the game, such as coloured clothing, white balls, day/night matches, and a change to the fielding restriction rules. The South African cricket team participated in the event for the first time, following the fall of the apartheid regime and the end of the international sports boycott. Pakistan overcame a dismal start in the tournament and eventually defeated England by 22 runs in the final, emerging as winners.

The 1996 championship was held in the Indian subcontinent for a second time, with the inclusion of Sri Lanka as host for some of its group stage matches. In the semi-final, Sri Lanka, heading towards a crushing victory over India at Eden Gardens after the hosts lost eight wickets while scoring 120 runs in pursuit of 254, were awarded victory by default after crowd unrest broke out in protest against the Indian performance. Sri Lanka went on to win their maiden championship by defeating Australia by seven wickets in the final in Lahore.

Australian treble (1999-2007)

In 1999 the event was hosted by England, with some matches also being held in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Netherlands. The nine full members contested the World Cup along with three associate members: Kenya, and for the first time, Bangladesh and Scotland who qualified through the ICC Trophy. Australia qualified for the semi-finals after reaching their target in their Super 6 match against South Africa off the final over of the match. They then proceeded to the final with a tied match in the semi-final also against South Africa where a mix-up between South African batsmen Lance Klusener and Allan Donald saw Donald drop his bat and stranded mid-pitch to be run out. In the final, Australia dismissed Pakistan for 132 and then reached the target in less than 20 overs and with eight wickets in hand.

A large crowd of over 10,000 fans welcome the Australian team on completing the first World Cuphat-trick – Martin Place, Sydney.

South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya hosted the 2003 World Cup. The number of teams participating in the event increased from twelve to fourteen. Kenya's victories over Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, among others – and a forfeit by the New Zealand team, which refused to play in Kenya because of security concerns – enabled Kenya to reach the semi-finals, the best result by an associate. In the final, Australia made 359 runs for the loss of two wickets, the largest ever total in a final, defeating India by 125 runs.

In 2007 the tournament was hosted by the West Indies and expanded to sixteen teams. Bangladesh progressed to the second round for the first time after defeatingIndia. Ireland making their World Cup debut tied with Zimbabwe and defeated Pakistan to progress to the second round, where they went on to defeat Bangladesh to get promoted to the main ODI table. Following their defeat to Ireland, the Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room. Jamaican police had initially launched a murder investigation into Woolmer's death but later confirmed that he died of heart failure. Australia defeated Sri Lanka in the final by 53 runs (D/L) in farcical light conditions, and extended their undefeated run in the World Cup to 29 matches and winning three straight championships.

2011

The 2011 Cricket World Cup was jointly hosted by India, Sri Lanka and for the first time Bangladesh. Pakistan were stripped of their hosting rights following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, with the games originally scheduled for Pakistan redistributed to the other host countries. The number of teams participating in the World Cup dropped down to fourteen. India won their second World Cup title by beating Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the final in Mumbai, and became the first country to win the Cricket World Cup final on home soil. India's Yuvraj Singh was named as the man of the tournament.